Windows Player settings

This page details the Player settings specific to Windows. For a description of the general Player settings, see Player SettingsSettings that let you set various player-specific options for the final game built by Unity. More info
See in Glossary.

You can find documentation for the properties in the following sections:

• Icon
• Resolution and Presentation
• Splash Image
• Other Settings

Icon

Enable the Override for Windows, Mac, Linux setting to assign a custom icon for your desktop game. You can upload different sizes of the icon to fit each of the squares provided.

Resolution and Presentation

Use the Resolution and Presentation section to customize aspects of the screen’s appearance in the Resolution and Standalone Player Options sections.

Resolution

This section allows you to customize the screen mode and default size.

Property	Description
Fullscreen Mode	Choose the full-screen mode. This defines the default window mode at startup.
	Fullscreen Window	Set your app window to the full-screen native display resolution, covering the whole screen. This mode is also known as borderless full-screen. Unity renders the app content at the resolution set by a script, or the native display resolution if none is set and scales it to fill the window. When scaling, Unity adds black bars to the rendered output to match the display aspect ratioThe relationship of an image’s proportional dimensions, such as its width and height. See in Glossary to prevent content stretching. This process is called letterboxing. The OS overlay UI(User Interface) Allows a user to interact with your application. Unity currently supports three UI systems. More info See in Glossary displays on top of the full-screen window (such as IME input windows). All platforms support this mode.
	Exclusive Fullscreen (Windows only)	Set your app to maintain sole full-screen use of a display. Unlike Fullscreen Window, this mode changes the OS resolution of the display to match the app’s chosen resolution. This option is only supported on Windows.
	Maximized Window (Mac only)	Set the app window to the operating system’s definition of maximized, which is typically a full-screen window with a hidden menu bar and dock on macOS. This option is only supported on macOS. Fullscreen Window is the default setting for other platforms.
	Windowed	Set your app to a standard, non-full-screen movable window, the size of which is dependent on the app resolution. In this mode, the window is resizable by default. Use the Resizable Window setting to disable this. All desktop platforms support this full-screen mode.
Default Is Native Resolution	Enable this option to make the game use the default resolution used on the target machine. This option isn’t available if the Fullscreen Mode is set to Windowed.
Default Screen Width	Set the default width of the game screen in pixelsThe smallest unit in a computer image. Pixel size depends on your screen resolution. Pixel lighting is calculated at every screen pixel. More info See in Glossary. This option is only available if the Fullscreen Mode is set to Windowed.
Default Screen Height	Set the default height of the game screen in pixels. This option is only available if the Fullscreen Mode is set to Windowed.
Mac Retina Support	Enable this option to enable support for high DPI (Retina) screens on a Mac. Unity enables this by default. This enhances Projects on a Retina display, but it’s somewhat resource-intensive when active.
Run In background	Enable this option to have the game running in the background instead of pausing if the app loses focus.

Standalone Player Options

This section allows you to specify how the user can customize the screen. For example, here you can determine whether the user can resize the screen and how many instances can run concurrently.

Property	Function
Capture Single Screen	Enable this option to ensure standalone games in Fullscreen Mode do not darken the secondary monitor in multi-monitor setups.
Use Player Log	Enable this option to write a log file with debugging information. Defaults to enabled.
Resizable Window	Enable this option to allow resizing of the desktop player window. Note: If you disable this option, your application can’t use the Windowed Fullscreen Mode.
Visible in Background	Enable this option to display the application in the background if Windowed Fullscreen Mode is used. Note: This will prevent keyboard shortcuts that minimize the app window, for example, Alt+Tab and Windows+M, from functioning. See PlayerSettings.visibleInBackground for more details.
Allow Fullscreen Switch	Enable this option to allow default OS full-screen key presses to toggle between full-screen and windowed modes.
Force Single Instance	Enable this option to restrict desktop players to a single concurrent running instance.
Use DXGI flip model swap chain for D3D11	Using the flip model ensures the best performance. This setting affects the D3D11 graphics API. Disable this option to fall back to the Windows 7-style BitBlt model. For more information, see PlayerSettings.useFlipModelSwapchain.

Splash Image

Use the Virtual Reality Splash Image setting to select a custom splash image for Virtual RealityVirtual Reality (VR) immerses users in an artificial 3D world of realistic images and sounds, using a headset and motion tracking. More info
See in Glossary displays. For information on common Splash Screen settings, see Splash Screen.

Other Settings

This section allows you to customize a range of options organized into the following groups:

• Rendering
• Vulkan Settings
• Configuration
• Shader Variant Loading
• Optimization
• Logging
• Legacy

Rendering

Use these settings to customize how Unity renders your game for desktop platforms.

Property		Function
Color Space		Choose which color space should be used for rendering: Gamma or Linear. See the Linear rendering overview for an explanation of the difference between the two.
Auto Graphics API for Windows		Enable this option to use the best Graphics API on the Windows machine the game is running on. Disable it to add and remove supported Graphics APIs.
Auto Graphics API for Mac		Enable this option to use the best Graphics API on the Mac the game is running on. Disable it to add and remove supported Graphics APIs. Windows does not support this property.
Auto Graphics API for Linux		Enable this option to use the best Graphics API on the Linux machine it runs on. Disable it to add and remove supported Graphics APIs.
Color Gamut for Mac		You can add or remove color gamuts for the Mac platform to use for rendering. Click the plus (+) icon to see a list of available gamuts. A color gamut defines a possible range of colors available for a given device (such as a monitor or screen). The sRGB gamut is the default (and required) gamut. Windows does not support this property.
Metal API Validation		Enable this option when you need to debug Shader issues. Note: Validation increases CPU usage, so use it only for debugging.
Metal Write-Only Backbuffer		Allow improved performance in non-default device orientation. This sets the frameBufferOnly flag on the back buffer, which prevents readback from the back buffer but enables some driver optimization.
Memoryless Depth		Choose when to use memoryless render textures. Memoryless render textures are temporarily stored in the on-tile memory when rendered, not in CPU or GPU memory. This reduces memory usage of your app but you cannot read or write to these render textures. Note: Memoryless render textures are only supported on iOS, tvOS 10.0+ Metal and Vulkan. Render textures are read/write protected and stored in CPU or GPU memory on other platforms.
	Unused	Never use memoryless framebuffer depth.
	Forced	Always use memoryless framebuffer depth.
	Automatic	Let Unity decide when to use memoryless framebuffer depth.
Static BatchingA technique Unity uses to draw GameObjects on the screen that combines static (non-moving) GameObjects into big Meshes, and renders them in a faster way. More info See in Glossary		Enable this option to use Static batching.
Dynamic BatchingAn automatic Unity process which attempts to render multiple meshes as if they were a single mesh for optimized graphics performance. The technique transforms all of the GameObject vertices on the CPU and groups many similar vertices together. More info See in Glossary		Enable this option to use Dynamic Batching on your build (enabled by default). Note: Dynamic batching has no effect when a Scriptable Render Pipeline is active, so this setting is only visible when nothing is set in the Scriptable Render Pipeline Asset Graphics setting.
Compute Skinning		Enable this option to enable DX11/DX12/ES3 GPU compute skinningThe process of binding bone joints to the vertices of a character’s mesh or ‘skin’. Performed with an external tool, such as Blender or Autodesk Maya. More info See in Glossary, freeing up CPU resources.
Graphics Jobs		Enable this option to instruct Unity to offload graphics tasks (render loops) to worker threads running on other CPU cores. This is intended to reduce the time spent in Camera.Render on the main thread, which is often a bottleneck.
Lightmap Encoding		Choose Normal Quality or High Quality to set the lightmapA pre-rendered texture that contains the effects of light sources on static objects in the scene. Lightmaps are overlaid on top of scene geometry to create the effect of lighting. More info See in Glossary encoding. This setting affects the encoding scheme and compressionA method of storing data that reduces the amount of storage space it requires. See Texture Compression, Animation Compression, Audio Compression, Build Compression. See in Glossary format of the lightmaps.
HDRhigh dynamic range See in Glossary CubemapA collection of six square textures that can represent the reflections in an environment or the skybox drawn behind your geometry. The six squares form the faces of an imaginary cube that surrounds an object; each face represents the view along the directions of the world axes (up, down, left, right, forward and back). More info See in Glossary Encoding		Choose Low Quality, Normal Quality, or High Quality to set the HDR Cubemap encoding. This setting affects the encoding scheme and compression format of the HDR Cubemaps.
Lightmap Streaming		Whether to use Mipmap Streaming for lightmaps. Unity applies this setting to all lightmaps when it generates them. Note: To use this setting, you must enable the Texture Streaming Quality setting.
Streaming Priority		Set the priority for all lightmaps in the Mipmap Streaming system. Unity applies this setting to all lightmaps when it generates them. Positive numbers give higher priority. Valid values range from –128 to 127.
Frame Timing Stats		Enable this property to gather CPU and GPU frame time statistics. Use this together with the Dynamic ResolutionA Camera setting that allows you to dynamically scale individual render targets, to reduce workload on the GPU. More info See in Glossary cameraA component which creates an image of a particular viewpoint in your scene. The output is either drawn to the screen or captured as a texture. More info See in Glossary setting to determine if your application is CPU or GPU bound.
Use Display In HDR Mode (Windows Only)		Enable this checkbox to make the game automatically switch to HDR mode output when it runs. This only works on displays that support this feature. If the display does not support HDR mode, the game runs in standard mode.
Swap Chain Bit Depth		Select the number of bits in each color channel for swap chain buffers. Only available if HDR Mode is enabled.
	Bit Depth 10	Unity will use the R10G10B10A2 buffer format and Rec2020 primaries with ST2084 PQ encoding.
	Bit Depth 16	Unity will use the R16G16B16A16 buffer format and Rec709 primaries with linear color (no encoding).
Load/Store Action Debug Mode		Highlights undefined pixels that might cause rendering problems in your built application. The highlighting appears only in the Game view, and your built application if you select Development BuildA development build includes debug symbols and enables the Profiler. More info See in Glossary in Build Settings. See LoadStoreActionDebugModeSettings.
	Editor Only	Highlights undefined pixels in the Game view, but not in your built application.

Vulkan Settings

Property	Description
SRGB Write Mode	Enable this option to allow Graphics.SetSRGBWrite() renderer to toggle the sRGB write mode during runtime. That is, if you want to temporarily turn off Linear-to-sRGB write color conversion, you can use this property to achieve that. Enabling this has a negative impact on performance on mobile tile-based GPUs; therefore, do NOT enable this for mobile.
Number of swapchain buffers	Set this option to 2 for double-buffering, or 3 for triple-buffering to use with Vulkan renderer. This setting may help with latency on some platforms, but in most cases you should not change this from the default value of 3. Double-buffering might have a negative impact on performance. Do not use this setting on Android.
Acquire swapchain image late as possible	If enabled, Vulkan delays acquiring the backbuffer until after it renders the frame to an offscreen image. Vulkan uses a staging image to achieve this. Enabling this setting causes an extra blit when presenting the backbuffer. This setting, in combination with double-buffering, can improve performance. However, it also can cause performance issues because the additional blit takes up bandwidth.
Recycle command buffers	Indicates whether to recycle or free CommandBuffers after Unity executes them.

Configuration

Property	Description
Scripting Backend	Choose the scripting backend you want to use. The scripting backend determines how Unity compiles and executes C# code in your Project.
	Mono	Compiles C# code into .NET Common Intermediate Language (CIL) and executes that CIL using a Common Language Runtime. For more information, refer to MonoA scripting backend used in Unity. More info See in Glossary.
	IL2CPP	Compiles C# code into CIL, converts the CIL to C++ and then compiles that C++ into native machine code, which executes directly at runtime. For more information, refer to IL2CPPA Unity-developed scripting back-end which you can use as an alternative to Mono when building projects for some platforms. More info See in Glossary.
API Compatibility Level	Choose which .NET APIs you can use in your project. This setting can affect compatibility with third-party libraries. However, it has no effect on Editor-specific code (code in an Editor directory, or within an Editor-specific Assembly Definition). Tip: If you are having problems with a third-party assembly, you can try the suggestion in the API Compatibility Level section below.
	.Net Framework	Compatible with the .NET Framework 4 (which includes everything in the .NET Standard 2.0 profile plus additional APIs). Choose this option when using libraries that access APIs not included in .NET Standard 2.0. Produces larger builds and any additional APIs available aren’t necessarily supported on all platforms. For more information, refer to Referencing additional class library assemblies.
	.Net Standard 2.1	Produces smaller builds and has full cross-platform support.
Editor Assemblies Compatibility Level	Select which .NET APIs to use in your Editor assemblies.
	.NET Framework	Compatible with the .NET Framework 4 (which includes everything in the .NET Standard 2.1 profile plus additional APIs). Choose this option when using libraries that access APIs not included in .NET Standard 2.1. Produces larger builds and any additional APIs available aren’t necessarily supported on all platforms. For more information, refer to Referencing additional class library assemblies.
	.NET Standard	Compatible with .NET Standard 2.1. Produces smaller builds and has full cross-platform support.
IL2CPP Code Generation	Defines how Unity manages IL2CPP code generation. This option is only available if you use the IL2CPP scripting backend.
	Faster runtime	Generates code optimized for runtime performance. This setting is activated by default.
	Faster (smaller) builds	Generates code optimized for build size and iteration. This setting generates less code and produces a smaller build, but can reduce runtime performance for generic code. Use this option when faster build times are important, such as when iterating on changes.
C++ Compiler Configuration	Choose the C++ compiler configuration used when compiling IL2CPP generated code.
	Debug	Debug configuration turns off all optimizations, which makes the code quicker to build but slower to run.
	Release	Release configuration enables optimizations, so the compiled code runs faster and the binary size is smaller but it takes longer to compile.
	Master	Master configuration enables all possible optimizations, squeezing every bit of performance possible. For instance, on platforms that use the MSVC++ compiler, this option enables link-time code generation. Compiling code using this configuration can take significantly longer than it does using the Release configuration. Unity recommends building the shipping version of your game using the Master configuration if the increase in build time is acceptable.
IL2CPP Stacktrace Information	Choose the information to include in a stack trace. For further details on the information types, refer to Managed stack traces with IL2CPP.
	Method Name	Include each managed method in the stack trace.
	Method Name, File Name, and Line Number	Include each managed method with file and line number information in the stack trace. Note: Using this option can increase both the build time and final size of the built program.
Use incremental GC	Uses the incremental garbage collector, which spreads garbage collection over several frames to reduce garbage collection-related spikes in frame duration. For more information, refer to Automatic Memory Management.
Allow downloads over HTTP	Indicates whether to allow downloading content over HTTP. The default option is Not allowed due to the recommended protocol being HTTPS, which is more secure.
	Not Allowed	Never allow downloads over HTTP.
	Allowed in Development Builds	Only allow downloads over HTTP in development builds.
	Always Allowed	Allow downloads over HTTP in development and release builds.
Active Input Handling	Choose how to handle input from users.
	Input Manager (Old)	Uses the traditional Input settings.
	Input System Package (New)	Uses the Input system. This option requires you to install the InputSystem package.
	Both	Use both systems.

API Compatibility Level

You can choose your mono API compatibility level for all targets. Sometimes a third-party .NET library uses functionality that is outside of your .NET compatibility level. In order to understand what is going on in such cases, and how to best fix it, try following these suggestions:

1. Install ILSpy for Windows.
2. Drag the .NET assemblies for the API compatibility level that you are having issues with into ILSpy. You can find these under Frameworks/Mono/lib/mono/YOURSUBSET/.
3. Drag in your third-party assembly.
4. Right-click your third-party assembly and select Analyze.
5. In the analysis report, inspect the Depends on section. The report highlights anything that the third-party assembly depends on, but that is not available in the .NET compatibility level of your choice in red.

Shader Settings

Property	Description
Shader precision model	Controls the default precision of samplers used in shaders. For more information, refer to Shader data types and precision.
Strict shader variant matching	Enable this option to use the error shader for rendering if a shader variant is missing in the Player build and display an error in the console. The error specifies the shader, subshader index, pass, and keywords used for shader variant search
Keep Loaded Shaders Alive	Keep all loaded shaders alive and prevent unloading.

Shader Variant Loading

Use these settings to control how much memory shadersA program that runs on the GPU. More info
See in Glossary use at runtime.

Property	Description
Default chunk size (MB)	Sets the maximum size of compressed shader variant data chunks Unity stores in your built application for all platforms. The default is 16. For more information, refer to Shader loading.
Default chunk count	Sets the default limit on how many decompressed chunks Unity keeps in memory on all platforms. The default is 0, which means there’s no limit.
Override	Enables overriding Default chunk size and Default chunk count for this build target.
Chunk size (MB)	Overrides the value of Default chunk size (MB) on this build target.
Chunk count	Overrides the value of Default chunk count on this build target.

Script Compilation

Setting	Function
Scripting Define Symbols	Set custom compilation flags. For more details, see the documentation on Platform dependent compilation.
Additional Compiler Arguments	Add entries to this list to pass additional arguments to the Roslyn compiler. Use one new entry for each additional argument. To create a new entry, press the ‘+’ button. To remove an entry, press the ‘-’ button. When you have added all desired arguments, click the Apply button to include your additional arguments in future compilations.The Revert button resets this list to the most recent applied state.
Suppress Common Warnings	Disable this setting to display the C# warnings CS0169 and CS0649.
Allow ‘unsafe’ Code	Enable support for compiling ‘unsafe’ C# code in a pre-defined assembly (for example, Assembly-CSharp.dll). For Assembly Definition Files (.asmdef), click on one of your .asmdef files and enable the option in the Inspector window that appears.
Use Deterministic Compilation	Disable this setting to prevent compilation with the -deterministic C# flag. With this setting enabled, compiled assemblies are byte-for-byte identical each time they are compiled. For more information, see Microsoft’s deterministic compiler option documentation.

Optimization

Property		Description
Prebake Collision Meshes		Adds collision data to Meshes at build time.
Keep Loaded Shaders Alive		Indicates whether to prevent shaders from being unloaded. For more information, see Shader Loading.
Preloaded Assets		Sets an array of Assets for the player to load on startup. To add new Assets, increase the value of the Size property and then set a reference to the Asset to load in the new Element box that appears.
AOT compilation options		Additional options for Ahead of Time (AOT) compilation. This helps optimize the size of the built iOS player.
Strip Engine Code		Enable this option if you want the Unity Linker tool to remove code for Unity Engine features that your Project doesn’t use. This setting is only available with the IL2CPP scripting backend. Most apps don’t use every available DLL. This option strips out DLLs that your app doesn’t use to reduce the size of the built Player. If your app is using one or more classes that would normally be stripped out under your current settings, Unity displays a debug message when you try to build the app.
Managed Stripping Level		Chooses how aggressively Unity strips unused managed (C#) code. The options are Minimal, Low, Medium, and High. When Unity builds your app, the Unity Linker process can strip unused code from the managed DLLs your Project uses. Stripping code can make the resulting executable significantly smaller, but can sometimes accidentally remove code that’s in use. For more information about these options and bytecode stripping with IL2CPP, refer to ManagedStrippingLevel.
Vertex Compression		Sets vertex compression per channel. This affects all the meshes in your project. Typically, Vertex Compression is used to reduce the size of mesh data in memory, reduce file size, and improve GPU performance. For more information on how to configure vertex compression and limitations of this setting, refe to Compressing mesh data.
Optimize Mesh Data		Enable this option to strip unused vertex attributes from the mesh used in a build. This option reduces the amount of data in the mesh, which can help reduce build size, loading times, and runtime memory usage. Warning: If you have this setting enabled, you should remember to not change material or shader settings at runtime. Refer to PlayerSettings.stripUnusedMeshComponents for more information.
Texture MipMap Stripping		Enables mipmap stripping for all platforms. This strips unused mipmaps from Textures at build time. Unity determines unused mipmaps by comparing the value of the mipmap against the Quality Settings for the current platform. If a mipmap value is excluded from every Quality Setting for the current platform, then Unity strips those mipmaps from the build at build time. If QualitySettings.masterTextureLimit is set to a mipmap value that has been stripped, Unity will set the value to the closest mipmap value that has not been stripped.

Logging

• Select your preferred stack trace method by enabling the option that corresponds to each Log Type (Error, Assert, Warning, Log, and Exception) based on the type of logging you require. For example:
  
  • ScriptOnly: Logs only when running scripts.
    
  • Full: Logs all the time.
    
  • None: No logs are ever recorded.
    

See stack trace logging for more information.

Legacy

Property	Function
Clamp BlendShapes (Deprecated)	Enable the option to clamp the range of blend shape weights in SkinnedMeshRenderers.