Tired of breaking your Unity project and having no idea what you did? do you “back up” your project by copying the entire 10 GB project folder each time? it doesn’t have to be like this!!
Spend ~30 minutes setting up a basic local backup system with Git to save time and frustration.
Git is like a save system for your project. You use it to take snapshots of your project as you work, so when something inevitably explodes, you can see immediately rewind back to the last working version.
If you’ve ever downloaded anything from GitHub, all those projects are using Git, and you can see the timeline of changes if you click around: https://github.com/VRCFury/VRCFury/commits/main/
Git can get pretty complicated, but you can go a long way with just a basic setup. I won’t cover any command line stuff or advanced features, just a simple workflow for saving, undoing, and making local backups of your Unity project.
You can use other version control systems besides Git of course, like Unity’s own Unity Version Control/Plastic, but Git is totally free, works locally, and is useful even outside of Unity.
To get started, download and install Git and GitHub Desktop:
Start by experimenting with Git on a Unity project you don’t mind breaking. Either make a copy of your current project or create a new throwaway project. Once you have a hang of the basics, you can start using Git on your main project.
Git can mess up your project if you use it carelessly, so safer to practice before going all in. I won’t cover any of the potentially dangerous advanced features though, so you should be fine if you stay within the guide.
Open GitHub Desktop. The first thing you need to do is set a default user name and optional email to associate with saved changes.
Click File > Options, go to Git, and enter a Name on the first line (it can be whatever). The second line is for an optional user email, but you can ignore that.
If you do want to publish your project to GitHub later, don’t use any name/email you wouldn’t want to be public.
Now you can add Git to your Unity project. Click File > New repository to create a new repository. A Git repository is basically just a folder where Git can track changes and save the history of all files within that folder.
Fill out the following three fields: