Lots of busy... Hold on.... etc?

Greetings.

Around 2 weeks ago I upgraded from Unity 2019.x to 2020.3.4f and the freezes (hold on messages started right after the first standalone build)
Never had such troubles in 2019 ver before the update and no changes were done on the assets after I switched to the 2020 LTS (using the latest URP), can confirm that bugs appeared just from the update. I cannot give a repro project as well, but from what I see in the comments this is now a regular event on many projects so it should not be so hard to reproduce.
Getting these freezes constantly is really a pain and show stopper.
I hope it will be taken with high priority and a solution will be found soon .

 

Its true that I've started getting errors after adding store assets to the project. Since I've added a bunch one after another i have no idea which one it may interfere with unity

Also some of those assets had editor scripts, they add menus in the unity interface

How can I figure out which can cause the issue? All assets appear to work correctly with no errors, the play works (I never had any issue in entering play or existing play) only these 10+ minutes loading bars when doing various tasks in the editor, like saving, clicking on a menu item at the top.

For example regarding saving, I've noticed that if i click in any unity panel, then use the Ctrl + S save shortcut, I get instant saving with no bar showing up.

But if I forgot to click in a panel, and I use the menu at the top, File + Save, then 10 minutes waiting time with the loading bar (then it actually save the scene)

 

The way I figured it out was a process of elimination. It's painful for sure, because you will need to go through everything one by one.

You can do what I did. Start deleting game objects from the scene that is causing you headaches. Each time you delete something, save it and play the build. If you are lucky you'll be able to catch which script \ tool \ prefab etc ... was causing the "hold on" bug.

Like I mentioned in my posts, it was only 1 scene that was causing the "hold on" errors. So I focused on those game objects and scene files.

So far Unity 2021 has been relatively fast. I don't get long "hold on" messages now. At most its maybe 10-15 seconds.

 

I didn't want to do that. But I did, and it seems to have fixed the issues I was having with the long wait for application.ExecuteMenuItem to complete (3+ min). Now I am not getting it today. I had been getting that for a while since Unity 2020. I was not sure how to get it to go away. I'm on Unity 2021.1.7f1

Thanks.

 

the most important thing of a Game Engine is task speed, unity so low, UE4 in same level of Game Edition, more quick and more industry,

 

same error

 

if i have tome i will try

 

unity is slow S***

 

Just to add that it's happening for me today in 2020.1.16f

We tried upgrading to 2020.3LTS but it killed our ARKit app so we had to roll back.

(but my other project that's in 2020.3LTS has the same issue, so that's a load of BS anyway)

I'm on a tight deadline and this is costing me huge amounts of time. My shadercache files etc. are all reasonably sized and this is from a clean Library rebuild but now every time I change a minor script or touch the wrong file the editor freezes with that godawful "Application.Reload" or "AssetDatabase.Refresh" popup that shouldn't have survived past alpha, let alone in a piece of supposedly functional software.

The history of this problem and this thread are damning for Unity's bug reporting and support infrastructure.

The Unity team can't keep hiding behind being unable to reproduce it or blaming specific packages.

Tonnes of people ITT and beyond, each with different configurations have all had this problem and it seems like a clearcut case of the UI team screwing around and putting blocking popups for things that should've been a background process spinner.

My next project I'm seriously considering Godot or Unreal because Unity is becoming a liability and I hate having 5 different versions of the editor installed just because the instability of the ecosystem.

 

I have bad news, this will not get better or fix itself.

I've invested time to learn unity and spent the low budget I have on various unity assets. If not for these two points I would get over to unreal in seconds.

I need to finish the project I've worked on for the past year but this Unity UI mess forced me to change the approach.

Now I'm splitting the game over several separate unity projects to finish building specific parts of the game as separate modules, then once all are done I will merge them together in one final project.

Maybe unity team will fix this issue til then, else I will painfully edit and struggle with 10 minutes pauses every few changes.

 

This is fairly standard routine regardless of Unity's current problem with some random slow process. Many people don't realize that it is a great move to not to put all the garbage into their main projects.
I open new, temporary "working" projects for things and only export over the bits I need. I would never install 3rd-party assets in my main projects, only the things needed for the build. For example when I generate landscape, I open a new project (same version and all) for Gaia, generate my landscape, export it into my main project when I think it is good enough for now. No sound libraries or icon packs, no nothing, only the things I actually use in my main project.

Basic organization goes a long way.

 

I tried to exit the editor and this happened

 

Good lord. Someone, please fix this mess. I just clicked on a button and it's been going on like this!

 

Just came here to add to the posts so that someone over at Unity can fix this. Open the same project, or start a new project in 2019 or 2021 and it is fine. Do the same in LTS 2020 and I get Hold on (busy for XX:XX). I'm on a high-end PC with SSD's and these screens take over an hour, or even just never finish.

Like I say, new project, existing project. Doesn't matter, as long as I use 2020 I get this issue.

 

It only takes a few minutes to disrupt the thread of thought.

 

Made a fresh project in 2021.2.0a20 with URP template on Windows 10. Literally did nothing else except switching the Runtime to .NET Standard 2.0 followed by switching the "Active Input Handling" to "Input System Package (New)":



So I went ahead and repeated this by making another new project but unfortunately it's not reproducible.

 

So glad I'm not the only one experiencing this, it's so bad that I find myself browsing websites while waiting more than actually getting things done these days. That being said, purposefully making a compile error and then changing code does seem to make the process of adding in new code SLIGHTLY less painful, as long as the only error is the one you created then it should do the compile fine when you're ready for a real test/wait.

 

Unity 2021.1.10f1 is totally unusable for me.

It just randomly hangs. The UI is not usable as long as I'm waiting for the "Paint". But it never ends...
Sometimes it's the Collab Window, sometimes it's the Package Manager window...

 

Yep. Same story here. Have fairly fresh project and every time I click 'play' in editor I need to wait 20 seconds for project to start. Let's just say it's infuriating.

I am using 2020 LTS version.

 

I play a round of street fighter. But then I come back more mad when I lose

 

This issue now is happening very frequently... i have to terminate unity tasks every 30 minutes or so...

Using Unity 2020.3.11f

 

Probably the 2020 version is doomed and will never be fixed. If this was something easy to fix it would had been already fixed by now.

I will try to move the project to the 2021 version, maybe it will work.

 

This is getting worse..

 

2021.1.11f1(newest at the time i write this)

 

Gonna throw my hat in the ring, same issue here. Must be new, I never got this on 2019. Real productivity killer.

 

After upgrading to 2020.3.12f1... and is becoming worst...

 

I was suffering from this issue for a long time. after removing collaborate and start using Git it's finally working normally.

 

ı was suffering too, even my teacher find anything. but ı know how it starts. ı was try to enabled visual st. in external script editor and here ı am

 

After a while you will recognize a "potential hold on" and then the Task Manager will be your friend
Just keep it open in the background

 

Yes, but this is a Unity Bug, the system is bugged and flawed, and terminating processes on windows is not really recommended as it can put the system unstable, also doing it every 30 minutes its not really a solution.

I gave up on using Unity Collaborate more than a year ago for being bugged and flawed, i am using GitHub (no issues here).

It happens in old and new projects.

And I can identify this issue with several actions:

Commuting between Rider and Unity
Saving a scene
Importing assets

Its not only a single issue that triggers the issue.
And it's not the hardware:

32 Gb DDR4 3200Mhz
Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-9900K CPU @ 3.60GHz 3.60 GHz
3 SDD (1 dedicated to Unity with 1 Tera)
MSI Geforce GTX 1070 Ti 8 Gb
MSI Main Board
etc...

 

So after I upgraded from 2019 , this started happening. ApplicationExecuteMenuItem. OnGuiSomething. Etc. Basically click anything on the project view and you would get it, click on any material and get it again. Click on save .. get it again. Click on a prefab get it again. BUT someone on this thread mentioned restoring the layout (Window, Layouts, Reset All Layouts) and this so far worked. Have not gotten that pesky Hold on bs message in the whole day.

Note: Had to click Reset All Layouts several times, as the console kept showing an error of not being able to delete something, warning and error. So I clicked Reset, then 2 by 3, then Reset then 2 by 3, did this 4 times. and so far so good. Just leaving this here, maybe you will get lucky too.

 

Disabling Analytics seemed to have greatly reduced or eliminated these waits for me. Stopping play mode went from around five minutes of "hold on" to a second. Starting play mode doesn't even show a "hold on" popup now. This is with 2020.3.12f1 on a slow laptop.

Note that my project doesn't use analytics but maybe the editor is using to it send usage metrics and the editor is blocking? Just a guess.

 

The editor is sending stuff regardless of whether you have the analytics package.

 

I guess i'll make the new material tomorrow...

 

This is ridiculous, we only migrate to LTS as in-between updates are too risky, but now even LTS is flawed.

My task manager is constantly open to kill the importworker that randomly freeze the editor every 5min when I work on scenes. Really easy to reproduce by just unloading or saving a scene.
I dunno why it's still not fixed, it should be priority number one as it decrease productivity of entire teams.
Only way I found to make things better is deleting the library folder and re-import the whole project. But it only work for a few days and then the issue get worst and worst again.
Deleting library every weeks is not a solution and our project take hours to import, and then we also have to wait shader variant to rebuild again for each build.

Please help

 

Why unity.exe have this flag enabled about cloudEnvironment enabled when I'm not using the cloud (from what I'm seeing in the menus it appears to be off)

Is this something related to this issue, unity attempts to contact some online server to update something on the could and then will wait for a reply that never gets back?



screen from taskmanager

 

Just to chime in, I've been experiencing the same issues as everyone in 2021.1.12. Lots of "Hold On" for minutes on every minor change, not to mention entering and exiting play mode, opening a project and quitting Unity. All "solutions", including deleting the library folder have achieved nothing. Pre Unity 2020 everything worked great. Get your act together Unity!

 

Killing the Unity.exe process that IS responding does seem to unfreeze unity but does doing this have any risks to corrupt something?

 

To all still having this issue (Slow initial project loading, slow prefab saving, slow scene saving, slow start Play, etc, etc).
Try going to "$projFolder\Library\ShaderCache" and delete "EditorEncounteredVariants", now open your project again and your issues should be gone. Check the file size of "EditorEncounteredVariants" before the delete and after you run your project again, it should be significantly lower.

Opening a bigger scene and switching and working on different Scenes(which is a normal thing ofc) bloats up this file more than usual since some version of Unity.

I will report an issue for this one and leave the link here, hopefully this helps you.
Cheers!

 

Hi guys,

I resolve this problem in Preference>General and UNCHECKED "AUTO REFRESH" AND "DIRECTORY MONITORING"

My suggestion for Staff Unity, leave this box unchecked by default...

PS: only uncheck auto refresh really stops to refresh every time it saves the code (hold on), but to be on the safe, unchecked it from monitoring directories



Be happy, I hope it helped!

xD

 

This looks so counter intuitive. The description on "Directory Monitoring" say that "it monitors changes to assets files INSTEAD of periodically scanning all files". If unity decides to scan all projects files this may block the editor for some time. So the option to monitor the directories should avoid the lock.

if this fixed the issue for you then maybe something is changing the assets files while they are not actually changed.

Looking at the logs on my computer, some of the time when the editor hangs is because is refreshing out of date something. And that takes minutes. This means that the editor thinks the files had been changed. But why?

Ok so maybe unity should look in this "Directory Monitoring" functionality, maybe there is something there that thinks the files had been updated.

 

Unchecked "Auto refresh" solves the problem.

Directory Monitoring it's just to remove this monitoring job, but it doesn't influence the auto refresh, that yes, causes the problem.

The cause problem is the "Auto Refresh" checked, just uncheck it for resolve!

 

It's a nice find 100%, but the problem is if you disable that, Unity won't update any C# changes you made. So you can make some errors in the code update, but the editor won't pick it up.

 

This is false for me.
I've unticked "Auto Refresh" as soon after creating my project, I like to manually refresh things with Ctrl+R and I am still getting a lot of those hangs and waits.
But I'd like to give that "Directory Monitoring" a chance.. all of the other workarounds here didn't really worked for me except killing the Unity.exe process with the "AssetImportWorkerX" argument (that just frees the editor terminating the hell it actually did lol)

When you make changes to the code you need to recompile it by "refreshing" it.. when you disable "Auto Refresh" you now bound to manually refresh it by using the shortcut Ctrl+R
This is also the case when you add files to the project and want unity to recognize them

 

Oh nice! I need to learn the short cuts for the editor

 

@richardkettlewell Curious to know if it's possible to have these run in the background completely? This will avoid disrupting work flow with the focus-demanding dialogs. Ideally similar to how Baking lights would carry on its work in the background with a progress bar on the bottom right. Having dialogs that demand window focus is very disrupting. Please consider this. Cheers!

 

@richardkettlewell

This suggestion is definitely +1 from me. if the various application.Tick , refresh GUI processes could be placed into the BG, as lower priority processes, the editor workflow would be much smoother.

From what I recall 2019 didn't have these processes that took away user control.

With the current workflow, after 3-4 C# edits, my mind gets distracted waiting for the editor to return control back to me... I often find myself on youtube or something else for 20minutes.

 

Updated to 2010.3.14 and it seems to be getting worse with each version. This issue has existed since 2020 became LTS. Why can't Unity focus on this bug?! Seems like a major flaw.