Is there a shortcut key for selecting multiple objects in Hierarchy without disrupting the current object shown in the inspector?

Unity Engine
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Question in title - Is there a shortcut key for selecting multiple objects in Hierarchy without disrupting the current object shown in the inspector?

I thought I saw someone do this in a youtube tutorial that I now can’t find and have been unable to find an answer online, but for the case of wanting to select multiple gameobjects and drag them into a list in the inspector for some component, how could you do this without needing to open the component in a new window and then selecting all the objects (i.e. I want to be able to hold shift, select the gameobjects I want, but keep the inspector unaffected, and showing a previously selected object) - is this possible? Maybe I am remembering incorrectly and it wasn’t a thing.

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You can have Multiple Inspector Windows in Unity!

This is convenient so that you don’t have to constantly select the same object during your work.

For example, you have one Game Manager that you constantly use (adding other objects or components there) and These Target Game Objects themselves.

So you can have 2 Inspector Windows:

  • One window you can lock (Game Manager).
  • Another window can be changed dynamically by selecting Target Game Objects in Hierarchy or in Scene View, as it was by default without locking.

Check my example in the screenshot:

Screenshot 2024-09-22 at 16.16.13
Screenshot 2024-09-22 at 16.16.131920×1248 181 KB

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This is exactly what I was remembering! Thank you, and I also didn’t know you could have more than one inspector window open, so that’s very handy

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Instead of opening and locking a new inspector, it’s often easier to used focused inspectors:

A focused inspector is a new inspector window that’s already locked to a target object. There’s tons of ways to open one, e.g. from the hierarchy, assets or even from a reference property (check the docs for a rundown).

If you need to drag some references into a script, locking the inspector can still be useful.

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