Icy DiffusersLoader

IcyDiffusersLoader is the ComfyUI-IcyHider wrapper around core DiffusersLoader - same node, renamed class so the preview-hiding extension can cover it. And before we go further: if you're a typical ComfyUI user, you probably never need this node. But when you do, it's the only thing that works, so it's worth understanding.

The node loads a complete diffusion model from a diffusers-format directory instead of a single checkpoint file. Where a normal checkpoint is one big .safetensors, a diffusers model is a folder tree - separate subdirectories for the UNet/transformer, the text encoder(s), the VAE, each with its own config and weights. It's the format HuggingFace's own library (diffusers) uses natively, and it's what you get if you pull a repo with git clone https://huggingface.co/... rather than downloading the merged single file. The KB's file-formats material notes that most distributions have converged on single-file .safetensors because it's simpler and safer; the folder format survives mostly for training checkpoints and people who prefer raw diffusers structure.

Inputs and outputs

• model_path (enum) - a directory under ComfyUI/models/diffusers/. ComfyUI scans that folder at startup, so a directory you drop in needs a restart to appear.
• Outputs: MODEL, CLIP, VAE - the three components separately, exactly like CheckpointLoaderSimple but as three distinct sockets ready to be wired into your sampler, text encoder, and VAE decode.

The practical upside of the split output: you can swap just the VAE or just the text encoder on a diffusers model without loading the whole thing again. The downside is verbosity - three wires where a normal loader gives you one.

When you'd actually use it

• You downloaded a model that only exists as a diffusers folder (some newer or experimental HuggingFace repos ship this way).
• You're doing training or testing with a model you've exported in diffusers format.

For everyday generation, CheckpointLoaderSimple (or a GGUF loader for quantized Flux) is almost always the right call. This node is the fallback for the format minority.

Installing it

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/icekiub-ai/ComfyUI-IcyHider

Restart, or install via ComfyUI Manager (search "IcyHider"). No pip dependencies, no models bundled - you supply the diffusers directory.

Common issues

• Missing node in shared workflows. Install the pack, or substitute core DiffusersLoader.
• Folder not in the dropdown. It has to live in ComfyUI/models/diffusers/ and ComfyUI has to have been restarted since you put it there.
• Load errors on a folder that looks right. Diffusers checkpoints come in many sub-formats (SD 1.5, SDXL, Flux, SD3 all have different directory layouts). If the loader rejects yours, it's usually a format/architecture mismatch, not a broken install.