Does the 2020.2 Editor run natively on Apple silicon / M1?

I see this in the release notes:
macOS: Added support for native Apple silicon and macOS Universal 2 builds.

Is that just in builds / the Unity Player, or is the editor itself a native M1 or Universal app?

 

Where is Unity with Apple Silicon M1 for macOS Player?

 

Does it mean that we might expect it on iPad OS at some point in the future?

 

That is something else entirely. They would have to rewrite the entire UI, add a code editor or something and much more. Plus, I don't even know Apple fully allows compiling code on iPadOS.

 

Rumors says that iOS 14.2 starts to allow JIT compilation (quietly). The article below claimed that JIT is only for side-loaded apps, but given that no apps on App Stores have ever used JIT because previous iOS simply couldn't, it only remains for Apple to approve JIT apps to be published on App Store.

https://9to5mac.com/2020/11/06/ios-...h-enables-emulation-apps-at-full-performance/

What this means is that potentially Unity could compile your C# scripts into an JIT assembly and load it on iOS. (like any other editor platform). But even if this is resolved, they still need to resolve their third-party dependencies, since iOS ABI is different from macOS ABI so even if those dependencies are recompile for ARM, they would not automatically work on iOS. And Unity still needs to build UI for touch controls, etc.

But here's the thing: with Mac products moving to ARM chips, and iOS apps running natively on macOS Big Sur, the boundaries have been blurred significantly. iPad, being a more portable form-factor, would likely never be as powerful as the latest Macs. If you need Unity to work on iPad, you might as well buy a Mac.

 

Do you have a potential ETA on when this would land, or a comparison of how Unity runs through Rosetta 2 possibly?

 

It runs smooth like native through Rosetta translation, see for yourself : Youtube Link

 

A native editor is one thing, but what about our games? When is native game compilation for M1 expected?

 

Apple Silicon suppport is already available. We're using it on Unity 2020.2, but I think it's also on 2020.1.

 

Nice.

Thank you Tautvydas.

Does UnityPurchasing work as well?

Marek.

 

Thanks.

 

Is there any chance that porting the editor to ARM for Apple Silicon support will result in support for Linux or Android ARM devices? I'd love to see the Unity Editor on some theoretical future Raspberry Pi 5 device.

 

Do you guys have any kind of even rough timeframe for a native editor?

 

Many months away is the nearest I think we can expect in regards a complete answer about timeframes, eg see this post: #118

 

I haven't seen a whole lot of information about people using Unity on M1's, but I'm impressed in my short time with it. It's more than comparable to my Ryzen 5 1600 + GTX 1080 — in fact in runs some scenes in editor twice as fast as that system. (Wow.)

That being said I can't seem to build an actual project that runs, even on 2020.2 (b12).
(EDIT: Looks like maybe I should try with b14.)

 

is it at least on the roadmap? unity supporting linux arm would be game changing for IOT

 

The fix in beta 14 is working as expected here, cheers for the fix.

 

any news when the first beta for native editor apple silicon support is going to come out?

can't wait! if it cuts down the compile/run/stop time it would be so freaking cool!

I would even take it with a lot of bugs

 

I'm not sitting around waiting for it to happen any time soon, since the last time this was mentioned they said it was many months away: #118

 

Thank you @Tautvydas-Zilys! Despite Unity being slower, my M1 MBA has replaced the 16 MBP - the silence alone is worth it. I'm really looking forward to Unity being ARM native.

 

You rock!

The silence and the battery life of M1 MBA is out of this world.
Replaced my 16" as well.

 

Alright, I just got mine, eagerly waiting native Unity ARM

 

Yes once it works I buy Mac Pro M2.

 

Do not rush to upgrade to M1 Macs.
Got MBP 13" on M1 recently. I foolishly expected performance to be on par with my old 6-core MBP 16" 2018, but it isn't the case. The Unity Editor feels a bit sluggish & choppier on M1 and entering the Play Mode is 2-3 times slower. It isn't unbearably slow and still pretty usable, but it will give you a noticeably worse experience compared even to a 3 years older intel Mac.

I really hope that native Editor will fix or at least somewhat alleviate the performance issue.

 

@pplcf - depending on Unity version, setup etc, you might benefit from turning off domain reloading (https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/DomainReloading.html) - I think @Tautvydas-Zilys mentioned it somewhere.

But yeah, I'm really looking forward to a native version too!

 

I came from windows i7 16gb gaming laptop GTX1060 6gb, I upgraded to 13 MBP M1 8gb...
Night and Day Performance difference on 2020.2f1 in favor of M1,
I'm so excited for more performance boost within a Native Unity Editor

 

when is the native unity editor coming to m1

 

eh, how long is a few months? 3, 6, 9... ?

 

Awesome to hear that it's being worked on. Is there's an ETA on a beta or preview build? Are we talking 6 months or closer to 3? Just trying to see if it's worth keeping the M1 or waiting until Unity runs natively on it...

 

Seems C# won't be native until C# 6 later this year. Will you have to wait for this to be released before fixing the long wait in the editor experienced after script changes?

 

Thanks for the details (perhaps I'm mixing up some things).

.NET 6 will apparently have native support apple silicon, scheduled for nov 2021. https://github.com/dotnet/core/blob/master/roadmap.md
https://github.com/orgs/dotnet/projects/18

VSCode is not native yet. But VSCode Insiders edition is. However, the C# plugin fails to load so it's not usable for unity dev yet.

 

So Unity 2020.2 with apple silicon native JIT/Mono, it's a lot faster for script changes and domain reload than Unity 2019.4.x (old JIT/Mono via Rosetta)?

 

I didn't notice any difference between 2019 and 2020.2 on M1 (just upgraded the project a week ago).

 

cool thanks for all the details. We'll look at other ways to get the iteration times down in the meantime. (asmdef / disable domain reload on play etc).

 

I wana buy a m1 MBP for my daily development.
Will there be a big improvement on compiling when the native editor comes out?

 

Hi, are there any updates?
Does everything in Unity runs natively on Apple m1 now (saw some updates in release notes recently)?

Also would be great to hear from m1 users who uses latest Unity version - any issues? what is performance?

 

any gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood news??