Suggestion: locked inspector should change color

Unity Engine
1

Will be extremely useful for everybody who forgets about locks, such as me.
Would be cool if this option was added to color settings.

7 Likes
2

Good idea. :slight_smile:

3

I totally agree!!!

4

I like this idea.

5

I totally agree that a clearer indicator for when an inspector is locked would be great.

Personally I think that tinting the whole inspector would be a bit too distracting - although admittedly it does match with Unity’s usual design language pretty well.

There’s one big problem with the idea though: how would it work alongside play mode tinting?

Instead of tinting the whole inspector, I would go with something a bit more subtle, along these lines:

5404818--548739--locked-indicator.png

Just making the lock icon more visually distinct - e.g. by tinting it red - when the inspector is locked already helps a lot.

Another solution would be to only tint the locked inspector for a short duration whenever the editor selection changes. This way it wouldn’t be distracting when working with the inspector, and it could co-exist with play mode tint by replacing it temporarily. It could also be more intuitive due to temporally connecting the tinting to the selection changing.

6

+1

7

Or simply only tint the locked Inspector when the editor is not in play mode. The information is useful only in not play mode. :slight_smile:

8

I think that could lead to user confusion due to being inconsistent.

I guess one option would also be to have play mode tinting ignore locked inspectors as a special case, while still affecting all other GUI elements in the editor.

5407353--549117--locked-inspector-tint.png
5407353--549117--locked-inspector-tint.png1139Ă—760 91.7 KB

This approach can definitely make it very clear when an inspector is locked.
However it doesn’t look very visually appealing in my opinion…

9

Who cares about appealing if its useful? :slight_smile:

10

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<---- this guy :smile:

11

It wouldn’t look that bad actually. Here, I have two locked views that were ignored in play mode:

5407440--549135--Sans-titre-2.jpg

12

The OP’s suggestion (and the one on which I based my mockup) was that the inspector should change its color when locked to a different one which is specified by the user in the color settings.

The problem with using a different color for locked inspectors based on whether we are in play mode or not is that it is no longer intuitive. If the editor behaved like in your mockup I’m afraid that many users might think it was the result of a bug.