Feedback [Feature Request] History & Favorites

Time is precious. I was tired of clicking around the same circuit inside Unity, eg terrain > microsplat > textures > ... just to toy around with settings. So I coded myself a little tool which stores a history. After that it was suggesting itself to store history items as favorites. But not only that, I also wanted to do this using the scene AND the project. Turned out easier than expected.

I released that tool on the Asset Store: QuickNav - History's Favorites

However, I don't do that for the money. I hope Unity will integrate something like that into their Unity versions. And rather sooner than later because it's simply such a time saver. You can also take mine as a base, I'd be happy about it.

I understand that Unity's implementation would have more requirements (e. g. a tree structure, favorites buttons next to the objects in the hierary/project, etc), but honestly a flat list is sufficient and definitely more than what is currently available: No history and a favorites mechanism that hardly anyone knows that it even exists or how it works. And it is very limited.

Instead of something trivial like this, yet powerful and most useful for others Unity puts efforts in eg the search package. History and favorites would honestly be more helpful for most Unity users, I guess.

Thank you very much for the consideration

 

Yeah, a simple case of "store current selection and allow going back/forward in history" is pretty simple to do. A whole bunch of people have done it already, here's a ransom selection:

• https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/utilities/selection-history-184204
  
• https://hextantstudios.com/unity-selection-history/
  
• https://github.com/acoppes/unity-history-window
  
• https://matthewminer.com/2018/04/22/unity-selection-history-navigator
  
• https://github.com/mminer/selection-history-navigator
  
• https://github.com/justonia/UnitySelectionHistory
  
• https://github.com/garettbass/UnityExtensions.SelectionHistory

What some of those do not handle, is multi-selection.

What none of those handle, is "non-object based selection", e.g. selected nodes in an animator state machine, or a shadergraph, or timeline clips, or preferences window pages, etc.

The "built-in" feature for all of this has been attempted several times over the years, but never shipped for one or another reason. The latest iteration was when I worked on adding it in late 2021, but then I left Unity :/ The "mostly finished" (famous last words...) state has been passed on to the relevant people, but at this point I don't know if/when they plan to ship it. Or whether it has faced the same fate as some previous iterations, where it was discarded.

 

It's still listed in "Under Consideration":

https://portal.productboard.com/ca1chnbwvzw1eg5yjc5rijnj/c/393-project-navigation-history

I'm not sure if / how the voting there is considered, but in case anyone wants that feature, cast your vote

 

imo that's way too fine granular for a first release. A simple object based history would suffice as a start, finer granularity can always come later. Anything is already better than what exists now: nothing.

But then again I'm aware how users would complain about the missing finer granularity. And then again they'd complain either way

 

Out of topic sorry but @aras-p you left from Unity? Come onnnn

 

Yes, some months ago. https://twitter.com/aras_p/status/1478593956204228613

 

@aras-p is now hard at work fixing problems in Blender instead! And probably other things

 

He's always a part of Unity, or Unity's a part of him. I struggle to imagine Unity otherwise. Now if only he would fix my game too...