What is a Unity Meta File?

When Unity imports an asset into the project, it stores certain settings and information such as where this asset will be used throughout the project for each asset separately, and the files in which this data is stored are called Meta files. Meta files end with ".meta" and when you enter your project's folder, you can see these files.

Every asset in Unity has a meta file, and these meta files must be in the same location as the asset files.

If the meta files of the assets in your Unity project are lost or deleted, every place in the project where that asset is used will give an error, and to fix these errors, you must re-place your assets in the places where you use them in your project and support them with a new meta file.

For every change made in the project, Unity automatically creates a meta file; if a previously created meta file exists, it deletes the old one and creates a new meta file, updating the old file with the new one.

Hiding Meta Files

Sample Meta File

fileFormatVersion: 2
guid: 6ea315d0fd7389c41b19996891e99ae3
folderAsset: yes
DefaultImporter:
  externalObjects: {}
  userData: 
  assetBundleName: 
  assetBundleVariant: