Does Unity 2019.4.x LTS work on M1 devices good enough to perform a release?

I have been looking for information but all of I found is old, obscure with half assessments and nothing really clear. I think that I'm not the only one with this doubt and I will appreciate a lot more info about it.

Does Unity Editor 2019.4.x work on the new Apple M1 devices? is good/stable enough to depend on it for a release? or do we need a intel mac to be sure that everything is working?

 

I am very interested in this as well, as i look for a new laptop and thinking whst to get, a mac was first thought as i already have windows laptop, and m1 seem to have some nice perks but read about many issues with it for now

 

We just got our M1 Mini (16 GB RAM version) yesterday late. A very quick test of one of our simple 3D geovisualizer apps worked under Rosetta. Its most complex aspect is the "Ultimate Terrains" voxel terrain middleware.

The app was originally built on an El Capitan 2008 MacPro (tower), Unity 2018.4 (IL2CPP). Started up and ran better than the 2018 Mini (i7) we have. Although there are some missing icons in our app that we'll have to fix. Not sure if its Rosetta issue, a Big Sur issue, or something else. If I had to take a guess based on past issues, its likely a problem of an older shader that was purely OpenGL and no Metal fallback.

As for Editor performance, still getting that setup today. Will defiantly come back with a report once we're fully moved over. The initial startup takes a bit while Rosetta checks/translates the Unity Editor, but it seems to be running smooth with 2019.4.16f1 and the Lego Microgame template.

By default the Editor builds an IntelMac Mono binary, so you should be fine to support IntelMacs off of an AppleSilicon build machine. I can't personally speak to IL2CPP build support just yet.

If you have some specific questions or tests you'd like to see run, please ask.

 

@FiveXGames I've been using the M1 Mini(8gb) since release with 2019.3 for some big iOS projects with lots of dependencies and it's been working fine. Only downsides I've found right now is creating scripts & saving scripts is very slow, takes about 6s each time for the editor to compile, as opposed to the 2-3s on my older MB Pro i7. Everything else is fine though, editor performance, compile times and play mode, it can even run the 3d Game Kit demo at 60-100fps.

 

Hi, thanks to all @TwoBentCoppers @theBdrive!

We purchased the M1 Mini(8gb) and right now we are using it in a small project without relevant issues and for the moment is working nice and smoothly.

Moreover we have made a build for iOS and is working as expected.

P.S: If I have more info I will update it.

 

Any M1 users building for Android here? I'm thinking about getting a new M1 MBP, but I don't want my workflow for Oculus Quest builds disrupted. Thanks!

 

Hey, any more updates? Still using Unity on M1? Everything working as expected? Is it any faster than on your previous Intel machine?

 

I have been using it (with emulation, Rosetta) nicely and it works smoothly, something similar (in general speed) to my desktop system (i5 8500k), but I'm using the M1 for a small sized project, so I can't ensure what may happen in bigger projects and how it will behave.

The only issue I have to deal with the private/public key and Sourcetree + Rosetta but I solved through the console.

 

Thanks for the heads up!

 

A question I had. If we bought an M1 Apple machine and tried to build a project that had an OpenGLES dependency, would it build successfully through both Unity and Xcode or would we still need an Intel based system to do it?

Thanks,

 

Yep

 

i am getting mac mini 2020 m1, for a build machine for webgl, android and ios. can i expect any problems with building with unity 2019? thanks

 

It should be fine. It's not nearly as fast as the native 2021.2, but it works.

 

I'm thinking about getting a new M1 MBP as well. My project is in 2019.4.13 LTS - is the editor support in now for 2019 LTS versions or should I hold off the machine switch for now?

 

You can run the 2019 editor, but it will be quite slow. For decent performance, you need to use 2021+.

 

Hi guys,

as I have also bought a new Mac with M1 (16 inch MacBook Pro with M1 Pro processor) I want to share my experiences with you on using unity 2019 via Rosetta.

I'm working on my project now for over 5 years, having hundreds of scripts and over 300.000 lines of code, many big scenes, so the project is really really big. Also having many sprites, having longer and big tutorial videos, the project is >5 gb. My previous MacBook Pro was a 2014 version with Intel i7, 2014 sounds old but the processor is still good and fast, unity worked well on it.

All I can say is: On the M1 it works even better then it did on my old Intel Machine, even if it's emulated. For sure not the whole potential is used like it would be on a native supported silicon version, but I was so glad that it runs that good via rosetta and I can continue on my game without having to be forced to update to 2021.

I can totally recommend working with Unity 2019 via Rosetta on M1 MacBooks, you won't notice a difference or it runs even faster.