Find Unused Assets In Project

Question

I read in another QA that unused assets are not included in the final build, so they don't put down the game performances.

If Unity is able to exclude those assets on build phase, is it also able to tell me which assets are unused then, so I can clean them up from my disk? How do I do it?

I've seen the "Select Dependancies" action under the "Assets" menu, but it only shows my items relative to the one I selected.

Answer 1

Unity don't include unused assets in your build. Only assets that are referenced by a scene (that is included in the build) and all assets from the resources folder are included in the build. As far as i know there's no way to "clean up" your project automatically. "Clean up" would mean to completely delete assets and such a task should not be automated ;)

If you want to know what assets are included in your build and how much memory they need, just open the console right after you've created a build and press "Open Editor Log" button.
Notepad will open up (on windows). Just search (CTRL+F) for "***" and you will find this line

***Player size statistics***

after that line you will find very detailed statistics about your build. - Included scenes and size of each - A list of all included assets - And much more...

The clean-up-problem is still there. We have almost the same problem in our project. I think an editor script could do that but you have to do the "used"-check yourself.

Finally here's a Unity-Forum-thread

edit

I've just wrote a little script that extracts the used assets from the editor log file.
It doesn't have much error checking and just search straight into the log. I guess if you create more than one build it will grab the first. You have to restart unity and create a new build to "update" the editor log content.

This script is written for Windows machines. It's just a little helper function. Now you can create a complete file list (via System.IO) and remove the used files.

But be careful: There are even files that should not be deleted!! (the Editor and plugin folder and propably some more)

Use this at your own risk

using UnityEngine; using UnityEditor; using System; using System.IO; using System.Collections; using System.Collections.Generic;

public class UsedAssets
{

 public static List&lt;string&gt; GetList()
 {
     List&lt;string&gt; result = new List&lt;string&gt;();
     string LocalAppData = Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.LocalApplicationData);
     string UnityEditorLogfile = LocalAppData + "\\Unity\\Editor\\Editor.log";
     try
     {
         // Have to use FileStream to get around sharing violations!
         FileStream FS = new FileStream(UnityEditorLogfile, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.ReadWrite);
         StreamReader SR = new StreamReader(FS);

         string line;
         while (!SR.EndOfStream &amp;&amp; !(line = SR.ReadLine()).Contains("***Player size statistics***"));
         while (!SR.EndOfStream &amp;&amp; !(line = SR.ReadLine()).Contains("Used Assets,"));
         while (!SR.EndOfStream &amp;&amp; (line = SR.ReadLine()) != "")
         {
             line = line.Substring(line.IndexOf("% ") + 2);
             result.Add(line);
         }
     }
     catch (Exception E)
     {
         Debug.LogError("Error: " + E);
     }
     return result;
 }

Answer 2

Answer by Dougomite · May 22, 2013 at 05:33 PM

Couldn't you select all the scenes being used in your project. Right click and select export. That should show you a list of all files that have dependencies with those scenes, meaning all the files actually being used. Export that, then import it into a fresh project. You should then have only the files that are being used. At which point I guess you could delete the old project and all those unused assets along with it.

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thesfid · Dec 11, 2013 at 04:53 PM 0

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This seems like a decent solution, and I'm going to try it in addition to the Clean Up script in the above answer.

One thing to keep in $$anonymous$$d is you have to select your scene(s), right click "select dependencies", scroll down to make sure the scene(s) are still selected (or CTRL+click to add them back to the selection), and then export to a package.

thesfid · Dec 11, 2013 at 05:07 PM 1

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@Dougomite: this answer works for me, mostly.

Not included when exporting the package is anything in the Standard Assets folder, in my case the Popup.cs file I used for my GUI (found on the wiki, linked below for reference/convenience/props to the author).

Luckily it was just the one script in my case, and it was easy enough to copy it over from the original project. Just something to keep in $$anonymous$$d for those who choose to go this route.

http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php?title=PopupList

thesfid · Dec 11, 2013 at 05:12 PM 0

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Hmmm, this also seems like it grabs a few things that aren't used. Not sure why that's happening, but either way the project folder is $$anonymous$$UCH cleaner.

Jesdisciple · Apr 21, 2014 at 10:02 PM 0

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for a creative solution. But watch out, assets retrieved via Resources.Load won't be in there, so that's "Standard Assets" + "Resources" that you need to copy manually so far. Plus anything your $$anonymous$$m wants in the project but hasn't yet used.

coolamigo · Jun 24, 2020 at 09:35 PM 0

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Worked for me. Still puzzled how the exported package was only 7.3 $$anonymous$$Bs while even my assets alone are over 25 $$anonymous$$B.

Answer 3

Answer by KristianHJ · Feb 15, 2012 at 01:08 PM

Created a tool on the asset store that automates the process. Lists all unused assets by type. Also lists the used files by filesize, making it easy to optimize buildsize.

Link to asset store

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Vicas · May 10, 2013 at 07:39 AM 0

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Great! This was just what I needed. Consider putting it on the Unity store! :-)

davidandrade89 · Feb 17, 2021 at 05:55 PM 0

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This is not available anymore

KristianHJ davidandrade89 · Feb 22, 2021 at 08:31 AM 0

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Seems the link was outdated. You can still find it here Link to asset store

Answer 4

Answer by AvPerov · Jul 08, 2021 at 12:26 PM

Dependencies-Hunter can help you with the task of finding unused assets in your project. It's free and open-source.

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Answer 5

Answer by achimmihca · Jan 02, 2018 at 07:45 PM

I also wanted to clear unused assets. I created a few scripts to show (un-)used assets based on the works from https://gist.github.com/karl-/4076464 What it does is read the unity build log to find the assets that are really needed and thus also the assets that are unused. The used and unused assets that are displayed can be filtered simply by selecting a folder in the project view. Works for me using Unity 5.5.0f3.

screenshot.jpg (57.2 kB)

buildinfo.zip (4.5 kB)

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davidandrade89 · Feb 17, 2021 at 05:48 PM 0

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This seems that might do the work for me! Do you have a readme file to use this?

achimmihca · Feb 17, 2021 at 06:31 PM 0

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I created a git repo and added a description. See https://github.com/achimmihca/Unity3DBuildInfoWindowFindUnusedAssets

Find Unused Assets In Project

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