Easily install any downloaded store package without the need of opening the Asset Store.
Check for updates and even open the Store to download an update.
Share any Unity package across multiple different Unity projects (that are built with the same Unity version) without copy and pasting.
Easily upgrade or downgrade installed asset store packages.
It has complete integration for Windows, Mac and Linux.
Shared packages are installed into the project using directory links. By using shared packages, you can have multiple Unity projects all using the same package folder, without needing to copy and paste each package per project. You can modify a file on a shared package and that change will be applied to all other projects that are using it. While directory link can be useful there are a couple of things to take into consideration before using them.
Relocating a project might not work
If you move a project the directory link might be lost. So instead you will end up with an empty folder. This can be fixed by deleting the empty folders and within the system re installing the package to the project as shared.
Different Unity versions
You need to be careful to not use the same shared package with different Unity versions. This might cause issues when re importing the package. The system installs the shared packages into a folder based on the Unity version to try to prevent this, but if you upgrade a project this might cause issues.
They are installed into a subdirectory on your project, this might cause issues with packages that are using a hard coded path or that need to be on the root of your Assets folder.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Even though it allows you to changes the installation location it doesn’t change any hard-coded path inside the package. Use with precaution.
Can you tell me a little more about this? The description doesn’t give a lot of details but I think this might be what I could use. I have a lot of assets and need something to organize them. Also, what does it mean by it changes the location?
Sure, this asset is not for managing your installed packages. The list of packages you see on the screenshot is the downloaded packages from the asset store located on the computer. They are organized based on the package category (that is what you can select from the dropdown).
What it means is that it allows you to change the installation location of the package. So let’s say that you have a folder called 3rd Party where you have all your downloaded assets. You can use this window to make the Unity default package importer import the package directly to that folder.
Ok thanks, I was looking for something to help organize my purchased assets.
I had started to make my own asset at one point to do this but had to set it aside to finish other things. If you don’t mind me asking, what did you use to open and read the package files?
No, I want the packages to stay where Unity downloaded them but I want to be able to setup categories, be able to search for things, assign key words, etc… I want to be able to quickly find an asset, click a button, and then have it imported into a project.
Your screenshots show package information such as the Unity version, the publisher, and the packages icon. Those are stored in the package file which is a zipped tar archive if I remember correctly. You have to read it to get those out and I was curious what you used to read the archive.
Alright now I got what you meant, sorry for the confusions. Yeah those are part of the future plans for this assets. As for the initial release you can’t organize them. You can only use the store category to organize them, but that will be added soon.
As for your question I’m just reading the zip file text data. I don’t have any image from it, that screenshot is the default unity package importer.
Ok, I see. Yea, that’s what I did initially. You can get some basic info out with a little effort but getting the package image and other details requires opening and reading the archive. There are some other assets on the store that do this and one I know uses Sharp Compress. That’s where it got a little complicated and why I put this on the back burner. When I saw yours, I thought if it did what I needed I wouldn’t need to finish mine
Version 1.2 is coming soon. There has been a couple of changes and now categories can be created for packages even if they are not from the asset store.
List of changes
Fixed filter bug where it was showing the wrong packages.
New .ini file system used to save packages data (version, title, path, etc) The .ini file can be found at your project settings folder.
Non Asset Store packages can now be added to the list. They will be saved even if the actual package is deleted (you will not be able to import it since the system will fail to locate the package, but you will still see the asset data)
Categories can be modified even for Store packages. This is now a text field where you can type the category you want. You can also use / to include dropdown sections.
Couple of minor editor window bug fixes.
None of the changes are applied to the .unitypackage or any other file. They are saved on the .ini file only. The system will not move or relocate any file/folder from the Asset Store or from custom pacakges.
Editor window modified to be able to modify category for Asset Store packages and to modify all the data for custom packages.
Version 1.1 has been submitted to the asset store for review. This version includes:
Fixed filter bug where it was showing the wrong packages.
New .ini file system used to save packages data (version, title, path, etc) The .ini file can be found at your project settings folder.
Non Asset Store packages can now be added to the list. They will be saved even if the actual package is deleted (you will not be able to import it since the system will fail to locate the package, but you will still see the asset data)
Categories can be modified even for Store packages. This is now a text field where you can type the category you want. You can also use / to include dropdown sections.
It sounds like this might be close to what I’m looking for at this point. Can you tell me how it gets the package list? I have a lot of packages and I was wondering if it reads the Unity asset folder and pre-populates the list or if you have to manually add the packages.
Yes it reads the Unity asset folder and populates the list from there. I am only missing the implementation for mac since I don’t have a mac system to test. The custom packages are the only ones that need to be added manually.
Just tried it out and noticed a few issues. First, when I open the window, nothing shows up under the Asset Store tab until I click Custom and then click Asset Store tab again. The second issue is the bigger one. It seems that there is a hard coded limit to the number of assets. I was trying to install one that started with a “V” and couldn’t find it in it’s category so I switched to “Any” and scrolled down but saw the list stopped around assets beginning with “S”. Also, it would be really useful to have a search option somehow. One other thing is it seems like it reloads the list every time you open it. I would much rather it only do that if the asset list is empty or we choose to refresh by pressing a button. When you have a large amount of assets, you really don’t want to wait for it to check for new ones every time you open it to install something.
It looks promising though and I hope these issues can be worked out.
One thing I just realized that would be a great addition is if you can have it do an update of a a package. I don’t know if this is feasible but this would be a big plus. Right now I have to use the slow asset store window to search for and then update a package when a new version is released.
