A quick tour of the editor
The toolbar, the left and right panels, the canvas, the screen tabs and the shortcuts you will use most.
The editor has five areas. Once you know them, everything else is easy to find.
1. The toolbar (top)
From left to right:
- Back arrow: returns to your dashboard.
- Select and Pan tools. Select (V) picks and moves things. Pan (H) moves the view around.
- Undo and Redo.
- Grid, Snap and Guides: show a grid, snap to it, and show alignment lines while you drag.
- Reveal Hidden: shows hidden elements (like a closed popup) faintly, so you can still edit them.
- Devices: previews your screen on phones, tablets and wide monitors.
- Zoom buttons and Zoom to Fit.
- Small buttons for keyboard shortcuts, the project theme, languages and variables.
- Unity status: shows whether Live Sync is connected.
- Play, Save and Export.
When you select two or more elements, align and distribute buttons appear in the toolbar too.
2. The left panel
- Components has three tabs:
- Library: every built-in component (buttons, panels, toggles, bars and more).
- Mine: components you saved yourself.
- Images: pictures you uploaded.
- Layers lists everything on the screen, top to bottom. Use it to pick small or hidden elements, rename them, lock them or put them in groups.
3. The canvas (middle)
This is your screen. Click an element to select it, drag to move it, and drag the small squares to resize it. Scroll to move around, and hold Ctrl while scrolling to zoom.
4. The right panel
What you see here depends on what is selected:
- Nothing selected: settings for the whole screen and project, in the tabs Screen, Theme, Variables, Data and Sounds.
- An element selected: its settings, in the tabs Properties (how it looks), Actions (what it does), Animate, Data and States (its hover and pressed looks).
5. The screen tabs (bottom)
Each tab is one screen of your game. Click a tab to open that screen, or + to add a new one. Templates adds ready-made screens and Scenes splits your screens across Unity scenes.
Keyboard shortcuts
Press ? at any time to see every shortcut. The ones you will use most:
Keys · What it does
Ctrl Z / Ctrl Y · Undo / Redo Ctrl C / Ctrl V · Copy / Paste Ctrl D · Duplicate Delete · Delete the selection Arrow keys · Move by 1 pixel (with Shift: 10 pixels) Ctrl S · Save Esc · Clear the selection
On a Mac, use ⌘ instead of Ctrl.