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Import Activity window introduction
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Import Activity window reference

The Import Activity window displays information about how Unity imported assets into your project. To open the window, go to Window > Analysis > Import Activity. The window contains the following information:

The Import Activity window with an asset selected.
The Import Activity window with an asset selected.

Toolbar

At the top of the window, you can select from the following options which change how the data is displayed:

Option Description
Show Overview Select this option to display the Import Activity Overview panel.
Options Adjust the information displayed in the Import Activity window. Choose from the following options:
  • Use relative timestamps: Displays the time in the Last Import column as a relative format (for example, 5 days ago). If you disable this option, the time is displayed in absolute format as Day-Month-Year Hour:Minute:Second.
  • Show previous imports: Displays previous import information about the selected asset in a separate panel in the window. The panel displays the previous times that Unity imported the asset, along with its Artifact ID, and the importer it used).
  • Include PreviewImporter: Displays artifacts generated by the preview window in the Produced Files list.

Asset list

On the left side of the Import Activity window, a list of assets that Unity has imported into your project is displayed. The following information is available:

Property Description
Asset The name of the asset and its extension.
Last Import When Unity last imported the asset.
Duration(ms) The amount of time that the last import took in milliseconds.

Information panel

The right of the window displays information about the selected asset, or the Import Activity Overview panel, if you select Show Overview 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
See in Glossary.

Asset information

When you select an asset from the asset list, the information panel displays the asset information. This following details are available:

Title Description
Asset The name of the selected asset. Select this field to locate the asset in the Project windowA window that shows the contents of your Assets folder (Project tab) More info
See in Glossary.
GUID The unique GUID assigned to the asset. You can use this to track its references across your project.
Asset Size The size of the source file of the asset.
Path The file path of the asset, relative to the project’s root folder.
Editor Revision The version of the Editor that created this artifact.
Timestamp The time at which the Artifact file was created. This matches the timestamp value of the file in the Library folder.
Duration The time Unity took to import this asset in the most recent import, in milliseconds.
Reason for Import A description of the change (or changes) in your project which caused this asset’s most recent import, and details about the associated dependency type.

The Reason for Import field has its own search bar, which allows you to search its text. This is useful in situations where an asset has many reasons for import (for example, a compute shader can have many dependencies that are modified when you change platforms).
Produced Files / Artifacts The list of files present in the Library folder that Unity produced when it last imported this asset. Usually there’s only one artifact per asset. However, some processes cause multiple artifacts, such as when Unity generates a preview of an asset.

During typical usage of the Editor, Unity might generate many versions of an asset’s import result (an artifact). For this reason, each artifact has an artifact ID for reference. This is different to the asset’s GUID.

The selected revision is referred to as the current revision, which is selected by default when an asset in the Asset List is selected.
Dependencies A list of Editor and project-specific variables which control the state of an asset, which, if changed, trigger the re-import of the asset.

Dependencies are how the Asset Database tracks the state of an asset. This means that if an asset dependency changes, the import result is different and Unity generates a new revision of an artifact.

Understanding your asset’s dependency types and what can cause them to change can help you get the most out of Unity’s Asset Database system, speed up your workflow, and avoid unnecessary import time.

This field has its own search bar, which allows you to search the text contained in the Dependencies field.

Overview panel

Select Show Overview in the toolbar to display an overview of the import data in your project. It contains the following information:

Property Description
Most Dependencies Displays a list of the assets in your project with the most dependencies, and the number of dependencies each asset has.
Longest Import Duration Displays a list of the assets that took the longest amount of time to import, and their import time in milliseconds.
Analyze Import Process Select this property to get a list of issues with the import processing of assets in your project, and suggestions for ways to suppress or fix the issues.

For more information, refer to Overview of import data.

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Import Activity window introduction
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