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Unity Tips – Play Mode Tint
The Unity default play mode tint, is so subtle that it can be easy to forget when you are in play mode and not in play mode. Find out how to change the tint colour in this post!

Unity Tips – Play Mode Tint

by | Oct 18, 2016 | Game Development | 5 comments

Selecting a colour using the dropper

The play mode tint is useful to know about. One of the things I noticed I was doing most often when developing using Unity is:

  • put the game in play mode
  • tweak something
  • forget that those changes are not persisted when the game is out of play mode
  • leave play mode
  • be sad and confused ?

Problem – Play mode tint isn’t very obvious

With the default play mode tint, the UI tint is so subtle that it can be easy to forget when you are in play mode (top) and not in play mode (bottom).

In play mode, slight tint Not in play mode, no tint

The best way to prevent this from happening is improve the visual indicator to remind yourself that you’re in play mode before you go making any big changes that won’t be saved.

Solution – Make play mode tint more obvious

You can do this by setting a new play mode (or playmode) tint in your Unity settings ?. To do this, in your Unity editor Window, you just need to:

Optional: Launch ‘Play Mode’ for your current Unity project, by pressing the ‘Play’ button at the top of the editor, to instantly preview the tint.

Unity Play button

Go to Edit > Preferences (or Unity > Preferences on Mac)

Click "edit" then "preferences" from the Unity menu

Select “Colors” from the Unity Preferences menu that will appear.

Select "Colors" from the Unity Preferences menu that will appear

Method A – the colour dropper

If you want to choose a pre-existing colour, click the Dropper icon to the right of the ‘Playmode Tint’ colour bar.

Select colour dropper for play mode

Then move your mouse around to select a new colour in real time – the yellow is kind of ugly, but it sure works.

Selecting a colour using the dropper

Method 2 – the colour bar

If you want to pick your own colour, click the colour bar to the left of the Dropper icon.

Select a colour from the colour bar

Then click and drag through the colours to select a new one, or enter a hex colour at the bottom.

colour-select

A word of warning

⚠️ Don’t bother lowering the transparency alpha (A) value unless you want all your buttons and Unity menus to disappear! Look at the top-right of the gif below.

Alpha value makes components disappear

If this happens, leave play mode and reset the alpha value.

Personal Choice

At the end of the day, it’s up to you which play mode tint you use! Mine is #54FFF7FF – leave a comment below with the ugly colour you’ve chosen! ?

5 Comments

  1. Dick McGimble

    This blog post was very informative. Never again will I be fooled by Unity in play mode, too many times have I made changes to a scene only to see them vanish ;(

    Reply
    • Vicky Potts

      Glad you found it helpful Dick! ?

      Reply
  2. Julian Gomez

    I’ve been using this feature for a while. I use a green color, very pale so it doesn’t interfere with with the content. Green is show that the game is GO-ing.

    Reply
    • Vicky Potts

      Hey Julian – thanks for subscribing 🙂 Green for GO is a wise idea – might switch to that from the luminous blue! ?

      Reply
  3. Marshall

    Very nice post. I’ll be subscribing to your rss feed and I hope you write again very soon!

    Reply

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