Unity runs out of sight while you watch the game stream. When you want the Hierarchy and the Inspector, one click shows the real editor window. It is the same running instance, so it appears instantly. One more click hides it again.
Plenty of tools will run Unity in batch mode for you. What you get back is a log file. If something looks wrong, your only recourse is to kill the batch process, open the project properly, wait through the import and the domain reload, and try to get back to the state you were in.
Satura Space takes the opposite approach. The instance it launches is a complete Unity editor, with every capability and every third-party extension intact, and its windows suppressed at the OS level. The game inside it streams into the app so you can watch and play it. The editor UI is not on your screen.
Reveal shows those suppressed windows. Because nothing is being started, the consequences are the ones you would expect from showing a window:
Hide it again and the session continues, untouched.
An agent changes a script. The patched code hot-reloads into the running session. You watch the result in the stream, grab the mouse, and play it. Something is off with a collider, so you reveal the editor, fix it in the Inspector, hide the editor, and keep playing, all inside one Play Mode session that never stopped.
The mechanism differs by platform. On macOS the app injects winhook.dylib and launches with -noMainWindow. On Windows that flag is not usable: an editor started that way has no GameView and takes the render thread down with it, so Windows instances run as ordinary GUI editors whose windows are hidden by unityhook.dll. Either way, the editor is fully alive and one click from view.
InstantA window show, not a launch. No relaunch, no import wait.
Keeps runningThe stream continues while you work in the Inspector.
The real editorEvery window and third-party extension behaves normally.
macOS · Windowswinhook.dylib on macOS, unityhook.dll on Windows.
The hidden instance is a full Unity editor whose windows are suppressed at the OS level; Reveal shows them. Same process, so it's instant, with no relaunch or domain reload, and Play Mode keeps streaming while you tweak the Inspector.
No. Nothing restarts, nothing recompiles, and no state is lost. Hide it again and the session carries on as it was.
Full. It is the real Unity editor, so every window, shortcut and editor extension you rely on works normally.
Because the game streams into the app with mouse, keyboard and audio, so most of the loop doesn't need the editor UI. That leaves one fewer window fighting for your screen.
Clones are real hidden editors too. See multiplayer testing for how the grid works.
Normal and Headless Graphics keep a revealable editor. Headless NoGraphics runs with no rendering, so there is no view to show.
A hidden editor that is still the real editor, one click from the Inspector.