Dead Overrides — documentation
How to run an analysis, what each finding means, and how to act on it. The tool reports only; removing an override is always something you do yourself in the Editor.
Requirements
- Unity 2022.3 LTS or newer, including Unity 6.
- Force Text asset serialization — Project Settings → Editor → Asset Serialization.
- Editor-only. Nothing in the package is compiled into a player build.
Installation
- Import the package from the Unity Asset Store through the Package Manager.
- Everything installs under the Punchdev folder in your project.
- Open the window from the Unity menu bar and run an analysis over the project or a selected folder.
Replace this block with the exact menu path, window name, scan scope options and a screenshot of a real result. This page is read by people deciding whether to buy, so it should show the actual interface rather than describe it.
The findings
Redundant
The override sets a property to the value it would inherit anyway. Removing it changes nothing about how the prefab behaves today, and restores the base prefab's ability to drive that property in future.
What to do: usually safe to remove. Check first whether the match is intentional pinning — occasionally a team overrides a value deliberately so that a future base change will not propagate.
Stale
The override targets a property or object that no longer exists in the source, typically left behind by a removed component or a renamed serialized field.
What to do: safe to remove. These do nothing but add noise to the file and to the override count.
Shadowed
A later link in the variant chain overrides the same property, so this override can never take effect. Frequent in chains three or more levels deep.
What to do: decide which level should own the value. The shadowed entry is the usual explanation for “I changed it and nothing happened”.
Duplicate families
Separate prefabs whose structure and values have converged closely enough to be consolidation candidates — commonly the result of three people building the same thing on three different weeks.
What to do: a judgement call, not a cleanup task. The report tells you the families exist; whether to introduce a shared base is a design decision.
Baseline overrides
Unity writes overrides into a variant at creation time, before anyone has edited anything: eleven for a Transform root, twenty-one for a RectTransform root. These are identified and reported separately so that the counts you see reflect your team's decisions rather than the Editor's bookkeeping.
The full breakdown is in Every prefab variant is born with 11 overrides.
Troubleshooting
A legacy prefab is not analysed as expected
Prefab files written before Unity 2018.3 use an older block structure. They are handled, but their override model predates the modern variant system, so findings on them are limited by what the format records.
Counts differ from the Inspector
The Inspector counts every override, including the baseline ones Unity wrote itself. This tool separates the two. A variant showing fourteen markers in the Inspector has three real overrides if its root is a Transform.
Support
support@voxcub.com. Include your Unity version, the tool version and, where possible, a prefab that reproduces the issue.
Product overview: Dead Overrides. Release history: Changelog.