What is EditorOnly tag used for?

Question

Looking at the documentation for tags, I stumbled across the predefined tag "EditorOnly". Does it hold any special attributes such as "MainCamera" does for the main camera? What is the intent of this tag?

Answer 1

Best Answer

Answer by Meltdown · Dec 21, 2010 at 02:03 PM

Sometimes you may want to draw some waypoints or markers in the editor, to make it easier to debug your game. for instance if you want a patrolling guard to walk a route, you may want render the route in debug mode as a set of lines, and confirm the guard is walking along it, obviously you don't want these lines appearing in your game, so you can set them as EditorOnly.

Add comment · Show 2 · Share

Statement · Dec 21, 2010 at 02:29 PM 3

Share

Oh I see! Objects with the tag are removed when building the game. I was only trying it out in the editor and I couldn't see any effects. I just tried it out, things with the tag are removed automatically when building.

ikriz · Aug 24, 2015 at 12:04 PM 0

Share

One of those little hidden gems

Answer 2

Answer by eiked · Mar 26, 2019 at 12:50 PM

I've made a test with Unity 2018.2.20f1 and game objects tagged with "EditorOnly" are being removed from compiled scenes. Prefabs remain however untouched and will contain game objects with this tag in the compiled game as well.

Add comment · Show 1 · Share

hexagonius · Mar 26, 2019 at 06:58 PM 1

Share

the tag only works on root gameobjects

Answer 3

Answer by Zib Redlektab · Dec 21, 2010 at 01:05 PM

I would assume that the tag is supposed to be used for objects that should never appear in an exported game, like guide objects or the like. However, minimal testing makes it seem like no, it doesn't hold any special attributes. It's up to you to implement its purpose.

Add comment · Show 3 · Share

Statement · Dec 21, 2010 at 02:40 PM 1

Share

Actually, it turns out that objects tagged with EditorOnly are removed when building the game.

Ferb · Mar 26, 2015 at 12:06 PM 0

Share

Documentation says these objects are removed when building, but I've not found this to happen in practise, for any platform I've tested. I have to run a script that says:

 foreach (GameObject go in GameObject.FindGameObjectsWithTag("EditorOnly")) Destroy(go);

(Generally foreach should be avoided, but this only runs once at the start of the scene, so simplicity is more important than efficiency here.)

ikriz · Aug 24, 2015 at 12:06 PM 1

Share

does not require a script to do this, the current 5.2 build removes the gameobjects automatically from your build

What is EditorOnly tag used for?

3 Replies

Your answer

Welcome to Unity Answers

Follow this Question

Related Questions