The Shelf - put your assets where you can reach them!

May 2024: The Shelf v3 has been released, a full rewrite of the asset using UI Toolkit and supporting Unity 2021.3 through Unity 6.

Check out this webpage for a rundown of the features: https://sttz.ch/the-shelf/

Below is the original release announcement, over 12 years ago!

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The Shelf is now available in the Unity Asset Store!



Did you ever find yourself hunting for the same prefab, material or script over and over again in the project tab? Or looking for the same game object again and again in the hierarchy tab?

The Shelf docks right below your project tab (or anywhere you like) and puts your assets and game objects right where you can reach them with ease.

• Great to keep your most frequently used prefabs, scripts and other assets where you can reach them quickly.
• Great to keep the most used folders in your project one click away.
• Great to open settings of assets and game objects in the inspector with a single click.

Use drag&drop to add objects to shelf, reorder objects on the shelf or drag objects from the shelf to components. Equally easily add, rename and reorder, the individual layers of the shelf. You can add as many layers as you need, with the toolbar accommodating as many as it can, the rest available from a drop-down menu.

More information in the readme

Get it in the Asset Store!

Feel free to ask any questions, feedback appreciated.

 

Nice idea. Will consider giving it a go.

A vid showing it in action would be cool.

-Jeff

 

This looks really great, I can see two more tabs that would be great to have for your tool.

tags / layers that would automatically show all objects with a certain tag / layer and when dragging a new object on this window assign the selected tag or layer to this object.

 

Great idea and looks like a very useful addition!

 

Indeed. It looks like something that would work well as part of the actual Unity Editor.

 

This is awesome. One thing that bothers me though, is that the shelf items don't save when you quit Unity?

EDIT: Scratch that, it does save!!

 

One thing thats definitely missing though is scrolling, cause when I fill up one shelf, I have to expand the editor window to see the rest of items instead of just scrolling.

 

I've been wanting this forever. Thanks!

 

Thanks for the feedback! If you have any suggestions for improving the Shelf, feel free to voice them!

I would like to keep the tool close to its core purpose of providing quick access to any asset in your project or object in your scenes. While I like your idea, it seems more fit for a dedicated tool than as a part of the Shelf.

In my experience, it felt more practical to expand the Shelf window when needed than to make it show scrollbars. But I can definitely add them in the next update, I'll just check if I should make them optional or not.

 

Version 1.1 just hit the asset store!

• Added vertical scrollbars when the items don't fit into a shelf (you don't get those in real life!)
• Clicking on scenes in the shelf will open instead of selecting them (thanks to Aaron for the tip!)
• There are two new buttons that show up next to scripts (to add them to the selected game object) and prefabs (to instantiate them into the scene)
• Remembering the currently selected shelf
• Small visual improvement: Items don't jump around anymore while rearranging

Also, to celebrate the update, you can now get The Shelf for $5.

 

Love the shelf, just upgraded to Unity 4 and the icons are huge. do we need to wait on an update to get them small again?

 

Man I find this so super useful-- especially for large projects with tons of scenes etc. Nice work on this!!

My one request is that right now it seems that if there's an asset from a different scene, it's greyed out in the shelf until that scene is active. Easy to solve by just including the 'scene' asset right in the shelf. But still, that means it takes two clicks to get to an asset from another scene (click the scene in the shelf, then click the asset in the shelf), instead of one!

I know I'm nitpicking-- but automatically jumping to the right scene for an asset would make the shelf even more awesome.

Thanks for such a useful tool.

 

What's the answer to the above Unity 4 question? Was there an update?

 

I think the shelf is a little inconvenient when a folder is selected.
The shelf points the folder itself. But I want to refer to the folder's contents.
Favorites tab is good at this point. This asset shows folder's contents properly when I select a folder.

 

Hey, after some time without finding time to work on The Shelf, I gave it the full-rewrite treatment! Just a bit late for the asset's 12 year anniversary.

It's now implemented using UI Toolkit and better suited for modern Unity versions (the initial version was written before multi-scene or prefab contents editing). There are also many new features and the asset is now more easily extensible (add custom actions, add context menu entries, customize the appearance of your own object types).

I made a little webpage with a rundown of the features: https://sttz.ch/the-shelf/

Asset Store link: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/utilities/the-shelf-2904