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Change asset store downloads storage folder! (To unity hub installation folder)

Discussion in 'Unity Hub' started by ReignOfDave, Jan 27, 2018.

  1. ReignOfDave

    ReignOfDave

    Joined:
    Oct 22, 2015
    Posts:
    51
    Hi i thought it might be a cool idea to change the asset store downloads storage folder if the hub is installed to the Unity Hub install location.

    It would help out a ton for users like me that have our os installed on a smaller ssd (Once we get an install location option).
     
    Slimmy and dolero33 like this.
  2. joeksy

    joeksy

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Jan 12, 2017
    Posts:
    155
    Hi,
    Thanks for your feedback, it is in Unity Hub's longer term plan to manage assets,
    your feature request have been note and we will make sure to evaluate it.
     
  3. Gibton

    Gibton

    Joined:
    Aug 22, 2013
    Posts:
    4
    Longer term plan?
    I have the same problem and looking for ways to solve it, I found a similar question that was asked 5 years ago! So how long is your longer term plan?
     
  4. CGCowboy

    CGCowboy

    Joined:
    Mar 7, 2018
    Posts:
    17
    Any update on this? It becomes a difficult decision to add more assets when we are locked into the drive they are stored on.
     
    ZoozleZone and OfficialHermie like this.
  5. If it's a really big problem, you can change a folder to a link. Symlink or Junction and you can store your assets wherever you want until Unity develops the proper installation/asset handling.
     
    EZaca, kenleim2008 and zetaFairlight like this.
  6. AbrahamDUnity

    AbrahamDUnity

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Jun 28, 2017
    Posts:
    431
    @CGCowboy we haven't given this much priority for now. We understand it's an issue and will make sure to consider it in our milestone planning. I can't promise an ETA so I would suggest using @Lurking-Ninja 's suggested fix in the meantime.

    Best,
     
  7. Vincent_Stagg

    Vincent_Stagg

    Joined:
    Jul 3, 2019
    Posts:
    13
    Any news on being able to change the asset store download location? I can see this being an issue, i have a large amount of asset store items but i can only download / keep saved a certain amount due to it being on a ssd 250GB storage, I have an empty 6TB hardrive which i would love to use.

    The issue i have seen is that if you own an asset store item if you have not downloaded it and the item is deleted/removed by the creator from the asset store the item is lost with no download option, (This has happened with free items I've added to my asset store so not sure if this is the case with paid items)

    I am worried that as i buy more and more items from the asset store i will be unable to keep them all downloaded on my PC due to being forced to use the C drive and could end up with expensive assets being removed from the store / my assets download.
     
  8. Deozaan

    Deozaan

    Joined:
    Oct 27, 2010
    Posts:
    707
    I'm in a similar boat, with only a 128 GB OS drive. Like Lurking-Ninja suggested, I work around the storage limitation by using a junction to my 5 TB HDD. Unity thinks it's downloading files to my C drive but they're actually being stored on a different drive, e.g., D:/Unity/Asset Store/

    But even if you decide not to use junctions, nothing is preventing you from downloading assets to your C drive, and then moving them to another drive for backup purposes and to free up space. That should put your mind at ease about assets being removed from the store.
     
    ZoozleZone and R3DE like this.
  9. GameDevDustin

    GameDevDustin

    Joined:
    Jul 17, 2015
    Posts:
    16
    Would really like to see this feature implemented.

    I like to use my C: as OS / Apps, games on another drive, and backups & unity + assets on another drive.
     
    R3DE likes this.
  10. Siafu

    Siafu

    Joined:
    Oct 16, 2014
    Posts:
    6
    It would be really nice that I didn't have this 150GB of unity assets stuck on my small C drive... Or buggy from symbolic link causing some errors. I really would like to choose an asset folder. Even Epic launcher allows this. I personally would be fine if I could change it in windows reg. If i buy an asset I like to download and test it. I think the only solution now is for me to stop buying Unity assets.
     
  11. jevcorvette

    jevcorvette

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    Nov 29, 2020
    Posts:
    1
    Hello i have a big problem i need to finish at june 2021 my game project so : what i do is i start the project go to asset store and download the things i need so i klick open with unity but then it stands "no items"! but i downloaded them if you see this pleace help or might i can help my self.
     
  12. Dirk611

    Dirk611

    Joined:
    Aug 12, 2019
    Posts:
    1
    If I install a symbolic link to redirect Unity Asset downloads to my E: drive, will Unity lose its link to the assets that are already on my C: drive? Thx!
     
  13. altepTest

    altepTest

    Joined:
    Jul 5, 2012
    Posts:
    1,105
    mind blowing that we can't change unity store downloads location. how is so hard to let the user save the path, store that path in a setting variable, then access that path. It (most of the time) work for the android paths.

    I suspect unity dev team is exactly like me, know a bunch of high end stuff but lack some of basics in coding. I can understand and relate with this.
     
    sereture likes this.
  14. eldvbear

    eldvbear

    Joined:
    Jul 21, 2016
    Posts:
    9
    Just tested it! I didn't have any issues with moving my Unity folder out of User/AppData/Roaming/ and moving it to my 2TB internal drive I use for my Unity Projects. I placed a junction in the AppData/Roaming folder and my AssetStore downloads downloaded to my F:\ Drive.
     
  15. ZeroFlame

    ZeroFlame

    Joined:
    Feb 23, 2017
    Posts:
    2
    wow 2021 and still no progress, amazing
     
    Gravesend, ericpug, Blitz54 and 4 others like this.
  16. Lorrak

    Lorrak

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    Sep 17, 2019
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    amazingly badly
     
    ericpug likes this.
  17. BenWoodford

    BenWoodford

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    Sep 29, 2013
    Posts:
    116
    Honestly it's far worse than "why does this have to be on my system drive?"

    The Roaming folder is for things you want to carry between logins on multiple PCs in a domain environment. For a business that is trying to entice enterprises to use it, Unity sure is making some bad decisions there. The roaming profile folder shouldn't be more than a few hundred megabytes tops, but Unity is bumping it into tens to hundreds of gigabytes that needs to be sync'd up to a domain controller until IT catch it and add it to the ignore list.

    Storing anything of reasonable size in the Roaming folder goes against all best practices
     
    OnatKorucu, Gravesend and andreibosco like this.
  18. samruilio

    samruilio

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    Aug 6, 2015
    Posts:
    7
    Wow, I'm looking for this option too. But it's still not there!
     
  19. redmotion_games

    redmotion_games

    Joined:
    May 6, 2013
    Posts:
    84
    At least allow people to download assets from their account via their web browser to a designated folder. A day's work for a good coder surely.
     
  20. Dukehuna

    Dukehuna

    Joined:
    Nov 29, 2017
    Posts:
    2
    I agree. Allow us to change the storage location of assets. System drive is for the system! You're taking up valuable space and it is not just inconvenient. You're wasting my time managing my own assets, or redownloading them! It's frustrating when I have to make room on my system drive because every single company wants to store their files on my system drive! Do I need to say anymore!
     
  21. Dukehuna

    Dukehuna

    Joined:
    Nov 29, 2017
    Posts:
    2
    Just in case... Even if I had a 10 TB SSD system drive I'd want to store it on another drive. Whatever happens to my system drive I do not want to affect my working assets! Allow me to keep it elsewhere!!!!
     
    zetaFairlight likes this.
  22. Lorrak

    Lorrak

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    Sep 17, 2019
    Posts:
    50
    this should be important, it probably wont do a lot of problems to make, cuz my nvme 500 is almost full, probably will crop some win10 unnecessary features next, on other hand I cleaned my program files directory :D
     
    zetaFairlight likes this.
  23. zetaFairlight

    zetaFairlight

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    Apr 26, 2018
    Posts:
    14
    We can no longer use Unity because of this issue that hasn't been solved for years. We know that a Symlink may do the job, but's it's not a clean way. Unfortunately we will have to move on...
     
    sankar_ps likes this.
  24. Deleted User

    Deleted User

    Guest

    I too would like to be able to set a destination for the downloaded packages. For now, I manually move them from their current destination to an external drive but it's rather clumsy, in my opinion. So, when will we see this happen? :)
     
    sankar_ps and Westland like this.
  25. Condemned75

    Condemned75

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    Apr 22, 2021
    Posts:
    1
    I've been building up a library of assets from the asset store for a collaborative game I'm developing, but I'm sorry this is a deal-breaker for me. Seriously, most PC users will have a dedicated OS drive these days and forcing us to store all our assets on that drive is ridiculous.
     
    JEJ_87 likes this.
  26. zumwalt

    zumwalt

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    Apr 18, 2007
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    2,287
    I too wonder when or if will get addressed, but, in the mean time it doesn't matter because you can make a link to a different folder, i did that, on my D drive i have plenty of TB free where as on my C drive i am stuck with an on board ssd that is not replaceable and it is only 258gb (sick), so i created a folder on my D drive for the items in the AppData\Roaming\Unity folder to link to, so all of my assets are actually on my D drive and Unity app thinks they are on my C drive. I actually did that back in 2018 when i was running out of space and discovered this issue. Been working fine for 3 years. Honestly, until Microsoft deals with the core problem like Linux has, which is probably coming, basically zero drive letters, just folders and drive space allocated to those folders regardless of physical storage medium, this will always pose some problem from app to app. Would be nice to see this in version 3k or some high level in the next decade, but honestly do not hold your breath. It might be extremely easy to program, maybe 10 minutes tops of code change, but its not on there roadmap which means 10 minutes or 10 years, its about the same time.
     
  27. bunnybreaker

    bunnybreaker

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    Dec 10, 2013
    Posts:
    23
    Come on guys. I know this isn't "high priority", but it really is basic application functionality that we shouldn't have to ask for in the first place.
     
  28. j-dies

    j-dies

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    Mar 29, 2020
    Posts:
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    6GB cache folder on my boot drive and I was wondering why it fills up automatically. Very frustrating.
     
  29. j-dies

    j-dies

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    Mar 29, 2020
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    Also, quite creative use of npm. Lol.
     
  30. studentvz

    studentvz

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    Dec 14, 2014
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    Last edited: Jun 12, 2021
  31. new_nathan

    new_nathan

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    Jun 18, 2021
    Posts:
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    I have a feeling there's some kind of configuration file somewhere we can edit to make this change ourselves, does anyone with a deeper knowledge of how Unity works have any ideas to that end?
     
    sankar_ps likes this.
  32. MagiJedi

    MagiJedi

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    Apr 17, 2020
    Posts:
    32
    The irony in all this is I'm sure a good chunk of revenue comes from asset store purchasers, so the people most impacted by this are actual revenue streams for the firm. This is absolutely ridiculous.
     
    bunnybreaker and Emursive-Indie like this.
  33. JeffNyman

    JeffNyman

    Joined:
    Jan 11, 2015
    Posts:
    1
    That's not really a fix; it's just a workaround and not a good one for a lot of people. A fix would be doing what most engines allow users to do: select a location for their assets. Or at least allow the equivalent of a "Download and Import to Project" (single action) that would tie the assets to an individual project and install accordingly in the project folder. By way of comparison, this is something the Unreal Engine does by default.

    All that said, it does seem like this is a fix that will be unlikely to be coming, given it hasn't been a priority since 2018 (and appears to have been brought up way back in 2011).
     
  34. nehvaleem

    nehvaleem

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    Dec 13, 2012
    Posts:
    429
    wait, what? What about PackageManager? Is the Hub really the best way to manage downloading of assets?
     
  35. thejimbarnes

    thejimbarnes

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    Jun 16, 2017
    Posts:
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    Would really like to see the mklink code you used to achieve this.
     
  36. Deozaan

    Deozaan

    Joined:
    Oct 27, 2010
    Posts:
    707
    Use the Link Shell Extension to accomplish this easily using the context menu in Windows Explorer.
     
  37. IgorLugosi

    IgorLugosi

    Joined:
    Jan 14, 2014
    Posts:
    3
    I would still like to see a usable solution for this as the Package manager happily packs my System Drive with tonnes of data. I have had my system drive fill up before and it is not a fun day to try to figure out what application went storage happy. Please give me the opportunity to protect my computer. It is infuriating when an app is naively designed and just floods the system drive with archive data with no choice for the user to aim the hose.
     
    MagiJedi and V4LK like this.
  38. FullDraw

    FullDraw

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    Sep 18, 2017
    Posts:
    13
    Is this seriously still an issue? What exactly is 'longer term plan', 10+ years? I'm getting tired of having to delete my asset store cache folder all the time.
     
    ericpug likes this.
  39. wahyuway

    wahyuway

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    Oct 7, 2013
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    Emursive-Indie likes this.
  40. Ubernt

    Ubernt

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    Feb 15, 2016
    Posts:
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    I'm also in trouble with this one. Wouldnt think this takes too much to do, saying as a developer myself.
     
  41. newguy123

    newguy123

    Joined:
    Aug 22, 2018
    Posts:
    1,248
    Considering it's been more than 2 years since any official Unity reply to this thread, I take it we can forget about them fixing the issue from their side and we yet again have to rely on work arounds as suggested by other users.
     
    EZaca likes this.
  42. george_ardeleanu

    george_ardeleanu

    Joined:
    Jul 9, 2021
    Posts:
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    This is the shell command that worked for me:
    mklink /D "C:\Users\(your user name)\AppData\Roaming\Unity" "D:\Programs\Unity\Unity AppData"

    Before running it, I copied everything from the original directory (AppData\Roaming\Unity) to the D: directory you can see on the right, then deleted the AppData\Roaming\Unity folder entirely. After you run it, you will see a shortcut type of icon instead of the AppData\Roaming\Unity folder.

    Hope this helps.
     
    Mashti likes this.
  43. wood333

    wood333

    Joined:
    May 9, 2015
    Posts:
    851
    For $5 you can purchase the "Asset Location Editor" off the unity asset store, that will permit you to relocate your asset download folder. Apparently it uses symlinks, which some users don't like, but it works. I used it once years ago. It was easy.

    I just used it again for my new build, win 10 Ryzen system. Still works.
     
    Last edited: Sep 26, 2021
  44. blackpillar_org

    blackpillar_org

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    Mar 30, 2020
    Posts:
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    Sorry, but this is pathetic... it's not rocket science to implement. No wonder Unity gets a bad rap.

    @george_ardeleanu

    It would be simpler to just type:

    mklink /D "%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Unity" "D:\Games\0 dev\Unity\"
     
    atomicjoe and rodrycode like this.
  45. Emursive-Indie

    Emursive-Indie

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    Nov 30, 2012
    Posts:
    4
    Wow, Legit not an official response to an obviously highly desirable feature by consumers who only need it the more they spend. I agree I love Unity however decisions like this give it the reputation that it deserves. Please address both with a fix and an Official response to show us that you care. Help us justify why we stay with Unity instead of looking to other engines
     
    ericpug likes this.
  46. atomicjoe

    atomicjoe

    Joined:
    Apr 10, 2013
    Posts:
    1,869
    Ok, so full step by step tutorial to move the store cache folder to a folder on another disk on windows:

    DISCLAIMER:
    DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK.
    I'M NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE OR LOSS.
    MESSING WITH SYSTEM FILES IS ALWAYS RISKY.
    IF YOU DON'T WANT OR KNOW HOW TO DEAL WITH SUCH RISKS, DON'T DO THIS!
    Like, really, don't come later telling me you messed up something and you don't know how to fix it.



    - open the file explorer and write this in the file path to go to the store cache folder:
    %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Unity

    - select all the files and folders and copy them pressing CTRL + C

    - open another file explorer window and go to the disk you want to move the cache to. We will assume its drive D

    - create a new directory in the D: root named
    UNITY_STORE_CACHE

    - go inside the new directory and paste the cache pressing CTRL + V

    - wait until the copy is done.

    - delete the folder
    %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Unity

    - open a command prompt window and copy-paste this: (right click on the prompt)
    mklink /D "%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Unity" "D:\UNITY_STORE_CACHE"

    - the unity store cache is now linked to the new location.

    Start Unity, open the package manager and download a new asset from your purchased assets on the store.
    Notice how it is downloaded to the D:\UNITY_STORE_CACHE folder instead of the old one.

    Now, the path "%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Unity" is actually pointing to "D:\UNITY_STORE_CACHE" in the other disk.
    "%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Unity" is no more a folder but instead a shortcut to "D:\UNITY_STORE_CACHE"



    To undo this and reset everything to default:

    - go to the folder "%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming"

    - DELETE the "Unity" 'folder' (it's not actually a folder, but a shortcut)

    - create a new folder named "Unity" inside "%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\"

    -
    copy back everything from "D:\UNITY_STORE_CACHE" into the new "%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Unity" folder you just created

    - once done, delete the "D:\UNITY_STORE_CACHE" folder.
     
    Last edited: Mar 9, 2022
    Cippman, andreibosco, Viewee and 2 others like this.
  47. Absoris

    Absoris

    Joined:
    Sep 10, 2017
    Posts:
    2
    2022, Still waiting...
     
    ericpug likes this.
  48. newguy123

    newguy123

    Joined:
    Aug 22, 2018
    Posts:
    1,248
    What you talking about?

    In 2022 its in:
    Edit > Preferences > Package Manager
    upload_2022-4-21_10-42-44.png

    You can have your packages and assets in different locations also
    I have my packages cached in a local drive and my assets on my NAS

    It works great as this location is remembered between different 2022 versions and projects
     
  49. atomicjoe

    atomicjoe

    Joined:
    Apr 10, 2013
    Posts:
    1,869
    Hey, that's actually a PRETTY GOOD IDEA! :)
     
  50. newguy123

    newguy123

    Joined:
    Aug 22, 2018
    Posts:
    1,248
    Its not without its drawbacks. Access time is slower than a local drive, and often I have to download an asset twice as the 1st time it doesnt register somewhere it seems. For example I would download a newly purchased asset and then when I want to import it, it does nothing, then I have to redownload it and only then it works.
     
    atomicjoe likes this.