BlackBox (Lite) – Prefab encapsulation, control overrides
Turn any Prefab into a "black box", hiding its components and child GameObjects. No more unwanted overrides or a cluttered hierarchy, saving time for the whole team.
by Ciro Continisio
Price History +
Note: this is a free Lite version of BlackBox, and it doesn't contain all the functionality of the full version.
With all the options that Unity's Prefab system offers, even for an expert user it can be easy to make a modification by mistake on a Prefab instance and leave it as an override in the scene, something that can become a source of bugs that are pretty hard to track down.
With Black Box it's possible to prevent overrides to any Prefab by just adding one component. This is something often referred to as "turning a Prefab into a black box", or "encapsulating", "collapsing" or "locking" it (there is no official name).
Since Nested Prefabs came out in 2018, users have been asking to make encapsulation part of regular Prefab workflows. Black Box enables just that, with a single component.
📦 LOCKING 📦
Once you add the BlackBox component, any Prefab with a number of children GameObjects and components appears as a single object in the hierarchy in the Scene. The user can only change the Transform properties, and enable/disable it. To modify other properties, simply open it in Prefab mode and make changes as usual.
📦 REVEALING PROPERTIES and DISABLE APPLY 📦
The full version of BlackBox includes even more safety and productivity tools.
Documentation
You can preview the documentation and learn all about the functionality, but remember that this free version only includes Prefab locking.
Version compatibility
Please note that Black Box is only compatible with Unity 2022 and later (including Unity 6).
