2 Unity Windows for same project

When I open a project, 2 windows will appear. One window will be blank, and the other will have the regular Unity UI. At times, I may be working in one and it will switch to the other. It’s pretty frustrating, but it started happening recently. It didnt occur in a21, but once I moved to b7, it started to occur on both. I’m pretty sure it’s my project bc the kart tutorial doesn’t have the same issues.

Hi @programmrzinc

Have you tried a full project reimport or deleting the library folder yet?

Hi @LeonhardP , I have the same problem.


It just started happening out of a sudden in Beta #7 and keeps happening now in Beta #8.
I’m not going to try a full main project reimport because it keeps happening even when I start a completely new project (and reimporting all in a brand new project doesn’t help).
The two windows complement each other in a way – closing one closes both, resizing the blank one messes up the other. Some popup editor windows appear in the blank window, so I have to switch between the two of them.

Here’s a GIF:
6461305--724567--Windows.gif

I’m not sure what caused it to happen in the first place… but now it happens consistently. Opening a 2019.4 LTS project still opens only one window, opening the beta always opens two.

I had the same problem. If I remember well, I set the layout to default (another predefined type should work) and saved the project. After opening it again, the blank window was gone.

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@darkydoodle Cool, thank you!

Now that you mention it, I remember getting this kind of error before it started happening:
6462097--724735--layout.png

My layout didn’t contain any “custom” windows, I think. It was this layout (minus the Entity Debugger):

In any case, Layout / Reset All Layouts resulted in this horrible mess (all background tasks were no longer “background” tasks):


but after restarting the computer, the problem appears to be solved and the project opens fine in a single window.
So thank you very much for the tip.

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Glad to hear the issue is resolved for you. If you happen to reproduce the behaviour at some point, it would be much appreciated if you could submit a bug report for it.

Yes, unfortunately, I don’t have concrete reproduction steps. This is the first time I’ve encountered it.

But I think – in my case – it might have started with this bug (an infinite loop of Failed to Load Window Layout) which happened to me around the same time. I clicked on both “Load Default Layout” and “Revert Factory Settings” a bunch of times to no avail. So possibly both of these bugs stem from the window layout somehow becoming corrupted.

If I encounter the bug again or even figure out reliable reproduction steps, I’ll send a repro project.

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Pretty sure I saw this one too with the same consequences…

6504753--732621--upload_2020-11-9_17-5-8.png
Hey all! Im note that on Unity 2020.2b8 to Unity 2020.2b10 and probably Unity 2021.1 A too.
When you open Unity Editor, its open a second more window . And when you want to use something like color pickers, its open color picker and this blank window on top of it that not allow you to use some tools.

Any idea what can cause it?

Hi @BATTLEKOT ,

Most likely a corruption of your Editor layout.

For a workaround, could you please try and do the following steps:

  1. Remove the LastLayout.dwlt file from your global Editor layouts folder. It should be located here:
    %APPDATA%/Unity/Editor-5.x/Preferences/Layouts
  2. Remove the LastLayout.dwlt file from your global Editor default layouts folder. It should be located here:
    %APPDATA%/Unity/Editor-5.x/Preferences/Layouts/default
  3. Delete CurrentLayout-default.dwlt file from your project’s Library folder

It’s important to remove the layout files from both the project and the appdata folders since the last used layout in the project can corrupt the newly generated layouts.

If you manage to find reproduction steps that lead to the corruption, we would very much appreciate a bug report for it.

Thanks for respond!
I’m only found this file.
And its happening too on another fresh project from another laptop.

Deleting files from step 1 and 3 helped. i was not able to find file from step 2
6513755--734318--upload_2020-11-11_22-13-25.png

just an update, I had to go back to 2020.1 to resolve the issue. I did have a custom layout in a separate window (uMotion) before I did the beta update, but removing the asset did not help. Like the previous posts, I did have a Failed Layout error many times and had to remove the file on numerous occasions to even open the project. I dont know what caused it, but I had to get off the beta channel in order to keep my sanity lol.

Same problem. At some point, I saw 3 editors presume the same project. I press “Default”, then restart Unity and the second phantom blank editor was out.

Sadly, but that happening on new beta version even on fresh projects. More faster when you do custom layers (I’m place on layout timeline + terrain tools) and sometime on project without any changes in layout .

Update 1/31/21: I was able to get the Check Update dialog to show up during the creation of a new project… and the layout error dialog reappeared, so this appears to follow the pattern of getting the error when the Check Update dialog intrudes. I logged a bug report for it. The following link shows an issue that seemed similar but different enough that I logged a new one.


Hey all. I ran into this issue today on Unity 2020.2.1f1 and stumbled across this post. After reading through the thread, I got a similar error box as @Rallix earlier today, although mine had an error description bit:

6784319--785528--Failed Layout Load.png

I had only made one layout - one for my home office where I have two screens available and I shuffled stuff around to give me more design real estate. After a bit of playing with it, I got it to duplicate a few times when creating a new project. The workaround that @darkydoodle suggested worked for me, though all I had to do was select the Default layout without saving and poof… no more extra window. After closing and reopening the project, it worked fine. However, my layout I had made was gone as well.

It stopped reproducing after my 3rd try, but I think I noted the main difference. The times where it failed with the above dialog, Unity had just opened the Check Update dialog for a new Unity version (it wanted me to download 2020.2.2f1 as it was available). Each time that window showed up during the startup of the new project, I got the error and my layouts were roached. The error isn’t happening anymore at the moment, but I’m not getting the Check Update dialog anymore either and my layouts load without issues.

If I can get the Check Update dialog to show up again during startup and get the error, then I’d say that’s probably it. If that happens, I’ll log a bug report for it. Hope this helps nail down this ugly devil as I don’t want to keep recreating my layouts. :slight_smile: