Unity stores lots of different types of information about your project, and some of these are saved in different ways to others. This means that when your work is saved depends on what kind of changes you are making.
Of course, we recommend you save regularly, and use a Version Control System (VCS) to preserve incremental changes to your work, and allow you to try out and roll back changes without risking loss to your work.
Scene changes include modifications to any objects in the Hierarchy. For example, adding, moving or deleting Game Objects, changing parameters of hierarchy Game Objects in the inspectorA Unity window that displays information about the currently selected GameObject, Asset or Project Settings, alowing you to inspect and edit the values. More info
See in Glossary.
To save changes to the scene, select Save SceneA Scene contains the environments and menus of your game. Think of each unique Scene file as a unique level. In each Scene, you place your environments, obstacles, and decorations, essentially designing and building your game in pieces. More info
See in Glossary from the file menu, or hit Ctrl/Cmd + S.
This saves current changes to the scene and Does a “Save Project” (below).
This means that when you do a “Save Scene”, everything is saved.
Some changes that you can make in Unity are not scene-specific, they are project-wide. These settings can be saved independently of the scene changes, by selecting “Save Project” from the file menu.
Using “Save Project” does not save changes to your Scene, only the project-wide changes are saved. You may want to, for instance, save your project but not changes to your scene if you have used a temporary scene to make some changes to a prefabAn asset type that allows you to store a GameObject complete with components and properties. The prefab acts as a template from which you can create new object instances in the scene. More info
See in Glossary.
The project-wide changes which are saved when you “Save Project” include:
All the settings for each of the “Project SettingsA broad collection of settings which allow you to configure how Physics, Audio, Networking, Graphics, Input and many other areas of your Project behave. More info
See in Glossary” menu items, such as custom input axes, user-defined tags or layers, and the physics gravity strength are saved when you “Save Project”.
Changes to these settings are saved in the Library folder when the Project is saved:
Build Settings are also saved in the Library folder as ´EditorBuildSettings.asset´.
Also saved along with project-wide settings are changes to assets that do not have an “apply” button, for example changes to any of the following:
There are some types of change which are immediately written to disk without the need to perform a “Save” action at all. These include the following:
The import settings for most asset types require that you press an “Apply” button for the changes to take effect. This causes the asset to be re-imported according to the new settings. These changes are saved immediately when you hit the Apply button. For example:
A few other types of data are saved to disk immediately or automatically without the need to perform a “Save” action:
Did you find this page useful? Please give it a rating:
Thanks for rating this page!
What kind of problem would you like to report?
Is something described here not working as you expect it to? It might be a Known Issue. Please check with the Issue Tracker at issuetracker.unity3d.com.
Thanks for letting us know! This page has been marked for review based on your feedback.
If you have time, you can provide more information to help us fix the problem faster.
Provide more information
You've told us this page needs code samples. If you'd like to help us further, you could provide a code sample, or tell us about what kind of code sample you'd like to see:
You've told us there are code samples on this page which don't work. If you know how to fix it, or have something better we could use instead, please let us know:
You've told us there is information missing from this page. Please tell us more about what's missing:
You've told us there is incorrect information on this page. If you know what we should change to make it correct, please tell us:
You've told us this page has unclear or confusing information. Please tell us more about what you found unclear or confusing, or let us know how we could make it clearer:
You've told us there is a spelling or grammar error on this page. Please tell us what's wrong:
You've told us this page has a problem. Please tell us more about what's wrong:
Thanks for helping to make the Unity documentation better!
When you visit any website, it may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. This information might be about you, your preferences or your device and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to. The information does not usually directly identify you, but it can give you a more personalized web experience. Because we respect your right to privacy, you can choose not to allow some types of cookies. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings. However, blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer.
More information
These cookies enable the website to provide enhanced functionality and personalisation. They may be set by us or by third party providers whose services we have added to our pages. If you do not allow these cookies then some or all of these services may not function properly.
These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. If you do not allow these cookies we will not know when you have visited our site, and will not be able to monitor its performance.
These cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising. Some 3rd party video providers do not allow video views without targeting cookies. If you are experiencing difficulty viewing a video, you will need to set your cookie preferences for targeting to yes if you wish to view videos from these providers. Unity does not control this.
These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems. They are usually only set in response to actions made by you which amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in or filling in forms. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not then work. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable information.