Addressable Assets Profiles

The Addessable Assets Profile system allows you to create a set of string variables that more easily enables you to change how your content is built into bundles. These variables can be used to determine whether your content is local to device or on a remote server.

For each profile, you specify values for each variable. This way, instead of manually changing the individual paths for each of your build scenarios, you can change profiles to swap them all at once.

Profile Setup

There are multiple ways to access the Profile setup window in the Editor.

  • Select Window > Asset Management > Addressables > Profiles.
  • Select Window > Asset Management > Addressables > Groups, then select Tools > Profiles.
  • Select Window > Asset Management > Addressables > Groups, then select Profile > Manage Profiles..
  • You can also access these settings via the AddressableAssetSettings Inspector.

Creating a service profile.
The Addressables Profiles window showing two profiles.

There are five variables we provide by default:

  • BuildTarget
  • LocalBuildPath
  • LocalLoadPath
  • RemoteBuildPath

  • RemoteLoadPath

    You can add or remove variables at any time.

Adding a new profile

You can create new profile by selecting Create > Profile. A new profile row appears in the table.

Right-click the profile name to select whether to set this as the active profile, rename the profile, or delete it.

Every profile must define a value for every variable. When you create a new profile, all values are copied from the currently selected profile.

Adding a new variable

You can create new variables to add to the default set by selecting Create > Variable. In the resulting window, give the new variable a name and string value, then click Save. The new variable appends to the end of the variable table.

Right-click the variable name to rename or delete the variable. You can likewise rename or delete the provided variables.

Syntax

All variables are of type "string". In general, you can type in exactly the needed path or value, but there are two additional syntax designators allowed:

  • Square brackets [ ]. Items surrounded by square brackets are evaluated at build time. The values inside can be other profile variables (such as [BuildTarget]) or code variables (such as [UnityEditor.EditorUserBuildSettings.activeBuildTarget]). During build time, as the groups are being processed, the items inside square brackets are evaluated and the resulting string is written into the catalog.
  • Curly brackets { }. Items surrounded by curly brackets are evaluated at runtime. Generally values here will be code variables (such as {UnityEngine.AddressableAssets.Addressables.RuntimePath}).
    For example, you have a load path of: {MyNamespace.MyClass.MyURL}/content/[BuildTarget]} set on a group that is creating an AssetBundle called "trees.bundle". During the build, the catalog would register the load path for that bundle as {MyNamespace.MyClass.MyURL}/content/Android/trees.bundle}. Then, at startup, as the catalog is being processed, the profile system would evaluate MyNamespace.MyClass.MyURL to end up with the final load path of http://myinternet.com/content/Android/trees.bundle.

Specifying packing and loading paths

Once you set up the necessary variables in your profile, you can select the build and load paths for an asset group based on those specified variables.

To set your build and load paths:

  1. Select an Addressable Assets group from the Project window.
  2. In its related Inspector window, under Content Packing & Loading > Build and Load Paths, select the desired variables from the currently set profile in the drop-downs for Build Path and Load Path.
    Notice that you do not enter the path directly, but rather select the variable representing the path defined in the Profiles window earlier. Once selected, the path displays under the drop-down but is not editable here.
    Be careful to ensure the build and load paths are a matched pair. For example, if you are building to the local path, you cannot load from a server.

Examples

Consider the following example, demonstrating the local development phase of your content.

Creating a service profile.
Content with local and remote bundles stored locally for development.

While in development, you would have both your local and remote bundles using local paths, as seen below.

Creating a service profile.
Paths set for local development.

In this instance, you can see that the local and remote paths are in fact local, which makes more sense for development, as setting up a remote server would be a pain. However, once the content is ready for production, you would move the remote bundles to a server, as the diagram below shows.

Creating a service profile.
Content with remote bundle moved to a server for production.

In this case, using profiles, you could change the remote load path for "Production" to that server. Without having to change your asset groups, you can change all of your remote bundles to actually become remote.

It should be noted, variables are arbitrary key-value pairs to aid development. Setting variables such as "LocalBuildPath" does not guarantee that data built to that location is copied to the StreamingAssets path of a Player build. Data is only copied to the Player's StreamingAssets folder from Addressables.BuildPath.