Assorted tips and tricks

This will be nothing new for you if you’ve read Unity starter pack, but these turned out to be more popular among people who are otherwise not transitioning from Unity.

Users transitioning from Unity often miss this gizmo, and for some reason it’s off by default.

In Editor Preferences, look for Enable Screen Rotate (there’s a search bar), or add this to DefaultEditorPerProjectUserSettings.ini in Config (create it if it doesn’t exist yet):

[/Script/UnrealEd.LevelEditorViewportSettings]
bAllowScreenRotate=True

Automatically update C++ binaries

If your team is small enough that you can have everyone install Visual Studio, add this to DefaultEditorPerProjectUserSettings.ini:

[/Script/UnrealEd.EditorLoadingSavingSettings]
bForceCompilationAtStartup=True

This makes it so that opening the project from the .uproject file compiles C++, avoiding having to make and distribute builds across the team. Designers and artists need only to install the required build tools, forget they ever existed, and enjoy using the correct binaries with zero additional effort. Otherwise, note that .uproject uses the Development Editor configuration, which is optimized. If you’ve been working with DebugGame Editor it might be outdated. For developers the easy “fix” is to always launch the editor from VS.

If you have settings in Saved, those take precedence so check there if it doesn’t seem to have an effect. That’s EditorPerProjectUserSettings.ini without Default in its name.

^{There’s a bug between 5.0 and 5.3: the popup that would show compilation
progress does not appear.
Your project will look like it’s not launching, but you can observe high CPU
usage while your code is otherwise compiling in the background normally.
You will get either the editor splash screen, or a message box with an error
eventually.
This bug did not exist in UE4 and was fixed in 5.4.}

Restore camera after Play-In-Editor

By default the camera stays where you were when you ended PIE. If you prefer, you can change it to return where it was by adding this to DefaultEditorPerProjectUserSettings.ini:

[/Script/UnrealEd.LevelEditorViewportSettings]
bEnableViewportCameraToUpdateFromPIV=False

PIV was the old name of PIE: Play-In-Viewport.

Launch with -stompmalloc (use UnrealVS or EzArgs) and issue the gc.CollectGarbageEveryFrame 1 console command.

Attempt to reproduce your problem, you should have a much cleaner call stack leading to the crash, often directly telling you what went wrong.

Opt out of data collection

These are also editor options but since you probably have DefaultEditorPerProjectUserSettings.ini open already:

[/Script/UnrealEd.AnalyticsPrivacySettings]
bSendUsageData=False

[/Script/UnrealEd.CrashReportsPrivacySettings]
bSendUnattendedBugReports=False

If you want to further reduce the amount of network traffic that the editor generates, add this to DefaultEngine.ini but note that this can impact functionality:

[/Script/UdpMessaging.UdpMessagingSettings]
EnabledByDefault=False
EnableTransport=False

[/Script/TcpMessaging.TcpMessagingSettings]
EnableTransport=False

Use your entire CPU to compile shaders

By default, Unreal throttles itself to around 80% of your CPU to compile shaders. To make it use all your CPU to compile faster, add this to DefaultEngine.ini:

[DevOptions.Shaders]
NumUnusedShaderCompilingThreads=0
PercentageUnusedShaderCompilingThreads=0
WorkerProcessPriority=1

Screen-space rotation widget

Automatically update C++ binaries

Restore camera after Play-In-Editor

Debug memory-related crashes

Opt out of data collection

Use your entire CPU to compile shaders