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Navigating the CPU Usage Profiler module

Navigate the CPU Usage Profiler module to investigate performance data.
Read time 4 minutesLast updated 10 days ago
The CPU Usage Profiler module has some universal operations to make it easier to navigate between views.

Focus on a selected sample

To focus on a selected sample, press the F key. If you've selected nothing, this shows the default zoom level.
When you change to the Hierarchy, Raw Hierarchy or Inverted Hierarchy view, your selection carries over, as long as the sample is on the main thread. If you can’t immediately find the selection, press the F key to focus it.
To zoom in on areas of the Timeline view's axis:
  • Use the scroll wheel on your mouse, or
  • Press and hold the Alt key while you drag with the right mouse button pressed down, or
  • Use the ends of the horizontal scroll bar to zoom in.
  • To pan the view, press the middle mouse button, or hold the Alt key (Command key on macOS) and press the left mouse button.
Press the A key on your keyboard to reset the zoom so that the entire frame time is visible.
The following options are available to manage the display of threads:
  • To unfold a thread, click the white arrow on the bottom of a thread to display all lines
  • To adjust the number of lines displayed, drag the line that separates the threads
  • To set the height of the thread’s section to the maximum depth of the call stack, double-click the line.
  • To collapse and expand groups of threads, click on the foldout arrows next to the thread names on the far left of the view.

Enable full call stacks

You can enable full call stacks for samples that 
GC.Alloc
, 
UnsafeUtility.Malloc
, and 
JobHandle.Complete
emit. To enable these call stacks:
  1. Enable the Call Stacks button in the Profiler’s toolbar. By default, this enables the call stacks for 
    GC.Alloc
    samples.
  2. To enable other call stacks, select the dropdown arrow and enable any of the other markers you want to display the call stacks for.
You can use this functionality whether you profile in the Unity Editor or on a running player. This only takes effect for the frames you profile after you enable this setting.
To investigate call stacks further:
  1. Select a sample in the Timeline view
  2. To copy the call stack, select Copy
  3. To open the relevant code file, select the file path (highlighted as a blue link). Note: Not all code files are available in this way. Also, the call stack information doesn’t contain the exact line number within that method but just the line at the beginning of that method.
To open the full call stack details:
  1. Open the sample in the Hierarchy or Raw Hierarchy view.
  2. Set the Details view to Related Data.
The Related Data view lists the metadata associated with this sample, which might include a 
UnityEngine.Object
that it was associated with. For any metadata entry that isn’t associated with a 
UnityEngine.Object
, the name displays as N/A in this panel. When you select an N/A entry, the Profiler displays the meta data, including the call stack in the bottom half of the details view.
Some samples that Unity reports has metadata built in, such as 
Camera.Render
samples linked to the 
Camera
GameObject that does the rendering. Unity reports these objects via their instance ID and resolves them to a name in the Profiler window, if you profile in Play mode. When you click on one of these objects, Unity tries to find the object via the Scene hierarchy and ping it.
Because the association uses the instance ID, pinging only works when you profile your application in Play mode, and for as long as the object still exists. For 
GC.Alloc
samples, this view displays a list of 
N/A
items, one for each allocation that happened at this hierarchy level, with the size of the allocation listed in the GC.Alloc column.

Profiler window in Timeline view with GC.Alloc sample selected (top), and with the same sample selected in Hierarchy view.

For more information about these markers, refer to the documentation on Profiler Markers.

Additional resources