I received an error that says "Enter safe mode?" How can I fix this?

Symptoms:

• I can't open my project because of this error.
• I found "Enter safe mode" when opening my project. I'm not sure what to do next.

Cause:

Unity’s Safe Mode is a mode that the Unity Editor can enter when you open a project that has script compilation errors; with this in mind, Unity automatically exits Safe Mode when you have resolved all the compilation errors.

Some common scenarios that might result in you encountering compilation errors occur when you:

• Upgrade a project from an older version of Unity to a newer version.
• Open a project in a different version of Unity from the one it was created in.
• Open a project with a missing package, or an incorrect version of a package.
• Open a project that has errors in your scripts.
• Open a project under version control, where the latest changes you pulled contained compilation errors.

Opening a project with compilation errors without Safe Mode can cause many problems. For example, packages in your project might not load or function properly, and your assets might be imported incorrectly, resulting in incorrect cached artifacts in your Library or your Cache Server.

In these situations, you usually don’t want to wait for the rest of the project to import before you can resolve the errors. Safe Mode provides you with the tools to resolve these script-related problems yourself or to use version control to update your project to a newer version that resolves the errors, without waiting for a full import of the project.

Resolution:

In most cases, you should choose "Enter Safe Mode" to resolve the errors in your project. This way, you can fix the errors in an environment designed for troubleshooting, and then get your project back to working order before Unity imports everything else.

However, there might be times when you don't want to enter Safe Mode. In these cases, you can either quit Unity or ignore the errors.

For more help, you can visit the Unity Discussion page where developers worldwide can assist you. Also, check out our Unity Documentation for more guidance on solving your issue.

More detailed information:

Unity Manual - Safe Mode