Diving Deeper - Unity Platform Graphics API Selection / Defaults

Sometimes we get so used to our daily tasks that we overlook values staring us right in the face. I've had people ask me at times 'what does this setting do' only to say 'hmm, not sure. I forgot it existed'. I want to start exploring some of these. Today we're going to be looking at this interesting but rarely used or known settings for "Auto Graphics Api for Windows" - or Linux if you have a long beard. I kid I kid :)  Anyways, note that I'm in the Player Settings for a Windows Standalone build (ie file-build settings-player settings with the PC platform selected in the build dialog)

These settings tell Unity to select the available graphics api in its own selection order. We can simply override them by unchecking the checkbox and then we're shown the default platform list.
















The results are pretty cool. I was curious if DirectX or OpenGL would show up for each platform, and they didn't which makes sense when you look at the output. Metal for iOS, XBoxOne for Xbox (as it contains a modified version of DirectX for its usage) and so on.

I wrote a quick script to dump these out for us


As always, I hope you learned something from this. Enjoy :)