Version: 2021.2
Rendering Profiler module
Video Profiler module

UI and UI Details Profiler

The UI(User Interface) Allows a user to interact with your application. Unity currently supports three UI systems. More info
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and UI Details ProfilerA window that helps you to optimize your game. It shows how much time is spent in the various areas of your game. For example, it can report the percentage of time spent rendering, animating, or in your game logic. More info
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modules provide information on how much time and resources Unity spends laying out and rendering the user interface within your application. You can use this module to understand how Unity handles UI batching for your application, including why and how it batches objects. You can also use this module to find out which part of the UI is responsible for slow performance, or to preview the UI while you scrub the timeline.

For more information on how to use the Profiler window, see the documentation on Getting started with the Profiler window.

The UI and UI Details Profiler module
The UI and UI Details Profiler module

Chart categories

The UI and UI Details Profiler modules’ charts are divided into five categories. To change the order of the categories in the chart, you can drag and drop them in the chart’s legend. You can also click a category’s colored legend to toggle its display.

Chart Description
UI Profiler module
Layout How much time Unity has spent performing the layout pass for the UI. This includes calculations done by HorizontalLayoutGroup, VerticalLayoutGroup, and GridLayoutGroup.
Render How much time the UI has spent doing its portion of rendering. This is either the cost of rendering directly to the graphics device or rendering to the main render queue.
UI Details Profile module
Batches Displays the total number of draw calls that are batched together.
Vertices The total number of vertices that are used to render a section of UI.
Markers Displays event markers. Unity records markers when the user interacts with the UI (for example, a button click, or a slider value change) and then draws them as vertical lines and labels on the chart.

Module details pane

When you select the UI or the UI Details Profiler module, the module details pane at the bottom of the Profiler window displays more details on the UI in your application. You can use it to inspect the profiling information about the UI objects in your application. The pane is divided into the following columns:

Column Description
Object A list of UI canvases your application used during the period profiled. Double click on a row to highlight the matching object in the 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
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.
Self Batch Count How many batches Unity generated for the canvas.
Cumulative Batch Count How many batches Unity generated for the canvas and all of its nested canvases
Self Vertex Count How many vertices this canvas is rendering.
Cumulative Vertex Count How many vertices this canvas and nested canvases are rendering
Batch Breaking Reason Why Unity split the batch. Sometimes Unity might not be able to batch objects together. Common reasons include:

Not Coplanar With Canvas, where the batching needs the object’s rect transform to be coplanar (unrotated) with the canvas.
CanvasInjectionIndex, where a CanvasGroup component is present and forces a new batch, such as when it displays the drop down list of a combo box on top of the rest.
Different Material Instance, Rect clipping, Texture, or A8TextureUsage, where Unity can only batch together objects with identical materials, masking, textures, and texture alpha channel usage.
GameObjectThe fundamental object in Unity scenes, which can represent characters, props, scenery, cameras, waypoints, and more. A GameObject’s functionality is defined by the Components attached to it. More info
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Count
How many GameObjects are part of this batch
GameObjects The list of GameObjects in the batch.

When you select a UI object from the list, a preview of it appears on the right hand side of the pane. Above the preview there are the following options in the toolbarA row of buttons and basic controls at the top of the Unity Editor that allows you to interact with the Editor in various ways (e.g. scaling, translation). More info
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:

  • Detach: Select this button to open the UI canvas in a separate window. To reattach the window, close it.
  • Preview background: Use the dropdown to change the color of the preview background. You can choose from Checkerboard, Black, or White. This is useful if your UI has a particularly light or dark color scheme.
  • Preview type: Use the dropdown to select from Standard, Overdraw, or Composite Overdraw.
Rendering Profiler module
Video Profiler module