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Unity Engine


Cache location reference

Reference for where Unity stores build cache files on different operating systems.
Read time 2 minutesLast updated 19 days ago

If you need to investigate build problems, then it can be useful to understand where Unity stores the caches and metadata files related to a Player build.

File location

Description

Library/Bee
Contains most cached build content.
Library/BuildPlayerData
Contains TypeDB files that record the schema of each C# type in your project at build time. Unity's serialization system uses these files to reconcile differences between the Editor and Player builds, such as fields that are conditionally compiled and excluded from the Player.
Library/PlayerDataCache
Contains staged and cached content from the build in a platform-specific subdirectory of this directory.

The content reuse aspect of the incremental build pipeline relies on the files
ScriptsOnlyCache.yaml
and
DataBuildDirtyInfo.json
inside the
Library/PlayerDataCache
directory. These record information about the most recent build of the content, and Unity uses them to determine if that content can be reused. If either of those files are missing then Unity performs a clean build.
Temp/StagingArea/Data/Managed
Contains assemblies if you use the
OnPostBuildPlayerScriptDLLs
callback.
BEE_CACHE_DIRECTORY
A machine-level cache that reuses specific parts of builds, such as non-embedded packages and libIL2CPP artifacts across different projects. The location of this cache is set using the
BEE_CACHE_DIRECTORY
environment variable, and defaults to a different location depending on your operating system:
  • Windows:
    %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Unity\Caches\bee
  • macOS:
    $HOME/Library/Unity/cache/bee
  • Linux:
    $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/.cache/unity3d/bee
    (if
    $XDG_CONFIG_HOME
    is set) or
    $HOME/.cache/unity3d/bee
The
Library
directory also stores the shader cache and the AssetDatabase cache, both of which cache data and help speed up subsequent Player builds.
Modifying or deleting these files outside of Unity can lead to unexpected issues during subsequent builds. These locations and filenames are subject to change between versions of Unity. If you experience build problems related to caching, consider performing a clean build.

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