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4 hidden Unity features worth knowing

by Dan
Sep 11, 2026
Connect
Four small editor tricks worth stealing, plus where CoreCLR and UI Toolkit stand right now. ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

Quick Unity dev note for you.

A few features that don't get much attention but earn their keep once you know they exist:

1. [ContextMenu]

Add [ContextMenu("Do Thing")] above any method and it shows up as a right-click option on that component in the Inspector. Great for one-click debug actions (reset health, force spawn, log state) without building UI for them. Docs here.

2. Animation Rigging

The Animation Rigging package gives you procedural IK (feet sticking to uneven ground, heads tracking a target) layered on top of regular animation clips, without hand-animating every variation.

3. Undo.RecordObject in editor scripts

If you're writing editor tooling, wrapping changes in Undo.RecordObject means Ctrl+Z works on your custom tool's changes, just like any built-in Unity action. Small thing, huge difference in how safe a custom tool feels to use.

4. Selection.activeGameObject

In any editor script, Selection.activeGameObject gets you whatever's currently selected in the Hierarchy. It's the backbone of most "operate on the selected object" editor tools, and it's one line.

From my desk

I'm in the middle of moving one of my own projects off UGUI and onto UI Toolkit, and I'll be straight with you: it's been a mixed experience. Some of it clicks immediately, USS feels like real CSS in a good way once it lands. Other parts have had me stuck for an evening on something that would've taken two minutes in the old Canvas system, mostly around getting the WYSIWYG editor to actually match what ships. I'm not abandoning the switch, I think it's the right long-term move, but if you're mid-transition too and feeling the friction, you're not imagining it.

Unity News

That friction I mentioned isn't just me. It's common enough that Unity's own UI Toolkit team has acknowledged UI Builder needs better stability and WYSIWYG accuracy before it's a smooth on-ramp for UGUI developers. On the roadmap for Unity 6.7: keyframed animations for UI elements right in the Animation window, the ability to place and select UI directly in the Scene view (including world-space UI), and referencing UXML elements straight from MonoBehaviour scripts. Slow going, but moving in the right direction.

Reply and let me know if you want a deeper dive on any of these. Whichever gets the most replies, I'll turn into a full post.

– Dan

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