You may already be familiar with the great Jetpack features that utilize the WordPress.com interface: the ability to update your plugins across multiple sites with a single click, being able to view enhanced stats about your site, write new and update existing posts and pages with a beautiful editor, and more.
Now, there’s even more new things to try!
Over on the WordPress.com Horizon, where the makers of WordPress.com test upcoming changes and new features with the WordPress.com community, there’s a call for testers for a new addition to the Jetpack management features on WordPress.com.
They’re currently looking for testers with Jetpack sites to test the new Plugin Browser feature.
The Plugin Browser lets you find and install plugins from the WordPress.org plugin directory. You can search for keywords or browse within Featured, New and Popular categories. If you’ve got plugins on your site that you no longer need, then this update also lets you remove (delete) those plugins from your sites. You can still activate/deactivate plugins, and turn on (or off) auto-updates as well.
As part of the plugin browser project they have added more details to the single plugin view, which now serves reviews and ratings from the WordPress community, as well as the full description, changelog and other information specified by the plugin author.
“That’s great – how can I help?” you might ask.
Simple! There’s a post on the Horizon Feedback blog with all the details you may need including what to test, how to test, and how to submit feedback to the WordPress.com development team.
The Plugin Browser will be open for feedback through September 28th – so head on over to the Horizon post and get a sneak peek at this great new feature.
Thank you so much if you take the time to test. We appreciate it!
Jetpack 
I was able to install and remove a number of plugins.
I tried to install a couple of other plugins and got told there was an error. The details about the plugin note that the plugins were not compatible with the current version of WordPress. Perhaps Jetpack could do add more information. Having said that the direct install on my website did not give much information either. All it said was no valid plug-in found.
Before the install it may be helpful to highlight some of the key information. Perhaps just a reminder to newbies to remember to check compatability and number of active installs etc.
Overall I like the new feature, just not sure I will need to use it a lot.
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Hi Alex – thank you for that feedback! Can you please add that to the feedback thread here?
https://horizonfeedback.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/test-plugin-browser/
Thank you for testing!
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Hi,
so focus is WordPress.com? For Jetpack users with an own installation of WordPress there is no advantage?
Regards, Christian
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Not at all! WordPress.com does not have plugins, so only Jetpack sites are the ones that will benefit from this new feature. It’s a future extension of Jetpack Manage, which allows you to manage your self-hosted WordPress sites from a single dashboard on WordPress.com. Read all about this feature here:
http://jetpack.me/support/site-management/
I encourage you to check out the test – if you just have Jetpack sites, then you’re just the tester we’re looking for.
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Christian, the cool twist is that you can now manage plugins for self-hosted WordPress.org blog through WordPress.com if you have a Jetpack-connected blog. It’s pretty neat, and you should check it out!
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Like Google and Facebook account soon WordPress.com account is also going to be a must. Hats off to you guys.
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