The Save Manager window

Tools > Beasty Save System > Save Manager opens the one editor window in the package. It does three things: it creates and configures the scene’s BeastySaveManager, it makes objects saveable, and it shows you the save files on disk so you can inspect, restore or delete them without leaving Unity.

The window is titled Beasty Save Manager. You can dock it anywhere.

The Save Manager window with all three sections

Manager

The top section finds the BeastySaveManager in the open scene — including one on an inactive object.

The Manager section with the BeastySaveManager inspector embedded

When there is no manager, you get a message (“No BeastySaveManager in the open scene.”) and one button:

Create Beasty Save Manager — creates a GameObject called Beasty Save Manager with the component on it. It is a single undoable step, so Ctrl+Z removes it cleanly. This is the fastest way to set up a new scene, and it is where the zero-code path starts.

When there is a manager, you get an object field pointing at it (click it to select it in the Hierarchy), a status card, and the full settings below.

The status card answers “what is this manager doing right now” at a glance: the active storage backend (with a Local or Cloud badge), the user provider and its current user when one is registered, and — in Play Mode — the result of the last save and load.

Under Settings, every field is grouped by role, and the groups are contextual — a field that does not apply to the active backend is hidden or disabled with a note, never shown as a knob that silently does nothing:

Backend — the Storage dropdown and Save Mode. With a cloud backend, Save Mode is locked to Asynchronous (“Cloud backends are asynchronous by nature.”); with local files, a Scope By User toggle appears here too.
Location — Folder, Extension, DataPath. Disabled with a cloud backend: “Cloud backends store saves per user in the cloud; these fields apply to local files only.”
Security — Encrypted, and the key field only once encryption is on. Enabling encryption without a key of your own warns: “No key set: a built-in default key SHARED BY EVERY PROJECT is used. Set your own before shipping.”
Reliability — Backup and Strict.
Versioning — DataVersion.
Logging — the logging mode dropdown.

Editing here is exactly the same as selecting the manager and editing it in the Inspector; it is here so you do not have to change your selection while you work. Every field is explained in settings.md, and the backend-specific behaviour in storage-backends.md.

The Slots on Disk section below reads the same settings, so changing Folder here immediately changes which files the window lists.

Saveables in Scene

The middle section is about which objects get saved.

The drop zone

A box that says “Drag GameObjects here to make them saveable”. Drag one or more objects from the Hierarchy onto it and each gets a BeastySaveable component with a fresh id. The whole drop is one undo step, however many objects you dragged, and undoing it also reverts the ids that were generated. The window repaints right after an undo or redo, so the list you see is always current.

The drop zone that turns dragged GameObjects into saveables

Objects that already have a BeastySaveable are ignored, so you can drag a whole selection over without worrying about duplicates.

Use it when you are setting up a scene and want to mark ten objects at once instead of using Add Component ten times.

Note The drop zone adds the component and the id. It does not tick any components for you. Select each object and tick what you want to save in its Saved Components checklist — see below.

The list

Below the drop zone is every BeastySaveable in the open scene, including the ones on inactive objects. Each row shows three things:

The list of saveables in the scene, with component counts and ids

The object itself, as an object field. Click it to select the object.
How many components it saves (2 comp.).
Its save id.

This list is how you audit a scene. Two things to look for:

A saveable with 0 comp. — it is registered, it is in the save file, and it stores nothing. Somebody added the component and never ticked anything.
Two rows with the same id — a duplicate. The second object is not registered at all and falls out of the save (an error is logged when the scene runs). This usually comes from copy-pasting an object whose id was typed by hand. Give one of them a different id. See scene-state.md.

The BeastySaveable inspector

Selecting a saveable gives you its own inspector, which is worth describing here because it is where the real work happens:

Save Id — the id, editable, with a New button that generates a fresh one. Changing the id orphans the data already saved under the old one.
Saved Components — a checklist of every component on the GameObject. Tick the ones you want in the save. Each is labelled with the layer that converts it: core (always available), a module id such as ugui or physics3d, or dev for a converter you registered yourself.
A warning when you tick a component nothing can convert. It says so plainly: SaveAll will fail with TypeUnavailable. Untick it, or read converter-modules.md.

Slots on Disk

The bottom section lists the actual files in the folder your settings point at. This is the part you will keep open while you test.

Note Slot browsing works for local file storage only. With a cloud backend active, the section says so (“Slot browsing is available for local file storage only.”) — a cloud slot list depends on who is signed in, so there is no single folder to show. Inspect cloud saves in the Firebase console instead; see firebase.md.

The Slots on Disk section listing save files with their metadata summary

Two buttons in the header:

Refresh — re-reads the folder. The window does not watch the disk, so after saving from a running game, click this to see the new file. Nothing is cached across a refresh.
Open Folder — opens the save folder in your operating system’s file browser. This is the reliable way to find persistentDataPath without looking it up. Use it to open a save file in a text editor, to copy one aside before an experiment, or to send one to a colleague.

If there are no files, the section says so (“No save files in the configured folder.”). If you expected files and see none, check the Folder and Extension in the Manager section above — the window looks exactly where your settings say to.

Each slot

Every save file gets a row:

The slot name. The name you would pass to SaveAll, Load or Delete. No extension, no path.

A metadata summary. The meta dictionary written with the save, shown as up to four key: value pairs joined with ·, then … if there are more. This is the whole point of metadata: a chapter name, a playtime, a level number, readable at a glance. Metadata stays in plain text even in an encrypted save, so the summary works whether or not the file is encrypted, and without the key. See slots-and-metadata.md.

If the file cannot be read at all, the summary is replaced by unreadable: and the error — Corrupt, ParseError, VersionTooNew and so on. That is a diagnosis, and the error codes are explained in results-and-errors.md.

Restore Backup. Copies the slot’s .bak file over the slot. It asks for confirmation first (“Replace slot ‘x’ with its .bak file?”), and it is disabled when there is no .bak — including for a slot that has only ever been saved once, because the first save of a slot creates no backup.

Use it when a slot reads as unreadable, or when you want to undo the last save during testing. The .bak is left in place afterwards, so restoring twice is safe. backups-and-corruption.md explains what a .bak is and when one appears.

Delete. Removes the save file and its backup. It asks for confirmation (“Delete save file ‘x’ (and its backup)?”). There is no undo — these are files on disk, not assets in your project.

Use it to get back to a clean state between tests. If you want to keep the file, use Open Folder and move it somewhere else instead.