AssetReference UX needs improvement

Unity Engine
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1

When assigning an AssetReference within the editor, often times the asset addresses are very long, especially since the default address is to use the path. This creates a problem because when picking an asset because the window is often not long enough to contain the entire address, making it impossible to tell them apart. This dropdown cannot be resized, and there are no tooltips.

I have also noticed that in the case where an AssetReference has a sub-asset, the field gets split in half, and dropdown is only as wide as it’s container- making it even smaller.

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The weird thing is, the dropdown contains addresses, but once picked, it displays the asset name rather than the address. Why this inconsistency? It would be much easier to read if only the asset name were displayed in the dropdown rather than the address.

Any improvements to this would be helpful, but imho the ideal solution would be open a separate full-featured window like the picker used for regular hard references.

1 Like
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Ideally, use the regular “Select asset” window, that’s used everywhere in Unity, for AssetReference’s too. The regular window is so much nicer to use than the Addressables popup.
Select asset window

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3

I agree. Maybe the reason they don’t do that is because they don’t want to actually load each potential asset in the editor if there are a lot of them? But for most projects that would not be a big deal.

4

Thanks for the feedback! I’ll kick this to the team!

5

Thank you for the feedback @jRocket

We can look into this. I do not know if we can use the asset picker. But the minimum we could do is to fit the popup better for the contents being displayed.

Thanks,
Andy