Unity Editor performance under Mojave (10.14) is less than half of 10.13.x versions of MacOS

This is most noticeable and a real problem when editing animations. They don't run even close to 60fps, even when they're relatively simple transforms like sprite scaling.

Get two Macs, same hardware, with these two different versions of OS to see the difference.

It's immediately obvious.

The problem is probably related to how the fonts are rendered in Mojave compounding the longstanding issues with Unity Editor UI rendering.

But it could also be many other issues, as the Editor is generally painfully slower in Mojave.

latest model MacBook Pro. Bug report submitted for one of the crashes that might be associated.

Case 1079409

 

The slowness is definitely something in the editor. I've made a test to play the animations in gameplay mode. When "maximise on play" hides the majority of the editor, the animations run smoothly.

When that's not the case, when some editor is visible, the animation is far below 30fps, let alone 60fps.

Stats in the game window report 4ms per frame and 200+ frames per second. Complete fiction.

 

Closing the Inspector showing the information of the object being animated does not help solve the problem. Releasing the object prior to playing the game does help.

So I take it back, it's not ALL down to the rendering of the UI. Some of it is the background updating of the elements of the selected object(s).

As I say, releasing all objects and hitting play solves much of the performance problem. But makes editing animations impossibly, as an object needs to be selected in order to edit its animations, or its timeline locked.

Locking the timeline, releasing the object and then playing only the animation still has less than 30fps rendering of the animation. The timeline rendering seems to be somewhat of a problem.

 

ROLLING back.

I cannot suggest using Mojave (macOS 10.14) for Mac.

This likely won't change after the beta cycle, as there are fundamental ways the text rendering has changed that's not good for coders. Quite bad, in fact.

Something about this also makes Unity Editor performance horrible. It's bad on a Mac, anyway. It's far worse under Mojave.

And if you like the trackpad, you're much better off with 10.13.6, as there's no way to have both triple finger drag and tap to drag work under Mojave, even with the old Terminal hacks.

UPDATE:
Batching also broken in Mojave. Twice as many batches.

Like for like hardware, the Unity performance is massively different between them.

 

This is terrible, just updated Mojave yesterday and My Mac Book air late 2015, is also running at half the speed in the editor, whether if it's in play mode or not. :S if you are a DEV DO NOT UPDATE TO MOJAVE

 

Downgrade. Backup everything.

Go to Mac Appstore and download Mac High Sierra Installer. it's about 4.8GB. Is a complete, fresh install.

Lot of work. But worth it.

 

What version of Unity are you using?

I see that 2018.2.9 contains a number of changes related to Metal UI performance:

https://unity3d.com/unity/whatsnew/unity-2018.2.9

 

I'm curious too, I was just about to update to the new macOS but decided to check out the forums first.

20182.9f1 Fixes said-
(1074400) - Editor: Fixed Metal Editor performance regression when running on macOS Mojave with Metal API Validation checkbox enabled

Anything tried to see these is all that's needed?

 

These problems are inherent to all versions of Unity I've tried, from 2018.1 betas through to 2018.3 betas.

 

Unity 2017.4.12f1 is Release today.
Fixed Mojave performance problem.

 

I'm using the latest 2018.2 on one machine and the latest 2018.3 beta on another. Both are staying at 10.13.6, I'm not going near Mojave.

Mostly because it's impossible to do pixel perfect font rendering on Mojave. Ironic. This makes it full circle, from Macs being for Designers... to no longer giving a S*** about them and their concerns, at all.

 

I don't understand this comment, could you clarify it a bit? Also, have you tried 2017.4.12f1 as monofreely has suggested?

 

hi guys, i have updated to Mojave and hit the same problem, i have projects on older versions of Unity that i can't move to newer versions so really updating software is not an option, a project i am doing that renders at around 12k 60fps and i normally preview in the editor at 4k 60fps it was running at around 10fps in Mojave, after a bit of messing just unchecking the Metal Api Validation button in the player settings has gave me a massive performance increase?! no idea why, its stuttering a bit for 5 seconds when starting and then goes back to around 40-50fps, so not perfect but worth noting as it might cure your problems too?

 

also i think this is an Apple problem, i have had issues like this with previous OS updates, and most of my apps are now running terrible, Rider totally stops all the time mid typing now, its getting hard working coding at all now

 

Disabling the Metal API checkbox on the player settings made my Unity 2017 editor run at nromal speed again, tunring that thing on when making a build just in case

 

damn you beat me to it and yeah I can confirm the fps is back to normal or at least 90% back to normal, no need to update to newest Unity versions nor reinstall High sierra or older MAC OS to fix this.

 

Can you post a screenshot of "Metal API checkbox" or describe where it is? I'm not seeing it.

 

sure, Edit/Project Settings / Player
and then on the Inspector Tab, the settings will display,
there it is on the "Other Settings" section, under rendering.

note* make sure you are checking the Settings for PC, Mac, & Linux Standalone Settings

 

I do not see any checkbox called Metal API.

 

Which Unity version are you using?

 

2017.4.4

 

Make sure you are checking the standalone options, here is the screenshot

 

I checked the Standalone section, it's not there. Mine says Metal Restricted Backbuffer Use instead.

 

try toggling that one then and see if it fixes it

 

I haven't upgraded to Mojave yet. It's just weird how we seem to have different settings.

 

I am using Unity 2017.1.3p1

 

Sorry. I should have also mentioned this.

Rider (and all text editors) really suffer unbelievably badly under Mojave. This is due to the "new" font rendering techniques in Mojave, which are a blend of lazy ways of achieving the dark theme propagating to how all fonts are rendered regardless of theme, and the changes made to make Marzipan work (iOS apps in macOS).

Essentially, they've gone from a CG (Core Graphics) focused rendering technique and technologies to a blend of it and CALayer rendering.

CALayer is always dynamic if there's any changes to the text, causing a much greater overhead. I think.

Plus CALayer font rendering is UGLY!!

And there's no way to entirely turn off the different types of anti-aliasing of CALayer, which is vastly inferior to that of how CG font rendering does it.

All ironic, because Steve Jobs went to ENORMOUS trouble to ensure all his Mac technologies had the best font rendering available, from way back in the days of Lisa.

 

Disabling Metal puts you back to OpenGL.

You'll get a speed up, but not nearly as much as you would have had under proper, fully functioning Metal of the pre Mojave days.

This is another strong reason to avoid Mojave.

 

Will do. Until I get official confirmation from Unity of proper Mojave support.

 

I am not talking about disabling Metal, basically I have the same issue in 5.6, 2017 and 2018, what I had to do is go to player settings, click Metal Editor Support, but uncheck the Metal API Validation tick box, and this gave Unity most of its performance back. Rider is still a mess though sadly, so hoping maybe an update to the OS sorts that out?!

 

Got the same problem on 5.6.4 and 2018. It's really tooooooo slow, but Cpu is Low, Mem is Los.... After disable Collab, switch Graphics API Metal to OpenGL, may speed up a little.
Hope a Official Deep Solution.

@creativewax , Thanks a lot for your tip. Unchecking the Metal API Validation made it faster.

 

Just updated to Mojave the other day. Same performance problem as everyone else. Disabling the Metal API Validation was a huge improvement, thanks for that!

Rider seems to be working fine. I've found no notizable difference there.

 

Had a big time lag in Unity. Just updated to 2018 2.14 . And way better performance now. No glitches and no performance lag. Also to my surprise Project importing was faster too! Thanks

 

It seems like maybe things are starting to turn around with the Mojave update? I still haven't update to the new OS because of the fear of Unity not working well with it, I want to hear more feedback before I take the dive.

For everyone that had problem at first, where are you at now? is disabling the Metal API Validation all we really need to do? Is Mojave even really worth the update with the offsite of unity running slower? Am I just worrying to much?

 

My projects will not open at all. Emulator is not working, im crying myself to sleep. I regret upgrading to Mojave

 

Yeah, it seems Mojave requirements are causing havoc among some big titles like ESO which have switched to other graphics API to support the new OS also experiencing performance issues. This thread "FPS Problem" is on fire: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/categories/mac-technical-support

Would be great to read an official statement on the topic.

 

Ok got my project running but indeed it's much slower. Is there an official issue that I can vote on or any official word from Unity on what could be causing this.

 

I am also having this problem. Was quite happy Mac was getting a dark mode so I upgraded. If I had known it would do this to Unity I would not have bothered with it. Is there any chance of a statement from a Unity Dev on this please and if there will be a fix any time soon?

 

It would be wonderful just to hear them say,"We are aware of the problem, and are working on a solution." But there hasn't been anything.

 

Didn't they fix the issue with the versions 2017.4.12f1and 2018.2.9f1?

https://unity3d.com/de/unity/whatsnew/unity-2017.4.12
https://unity3d.com/de/unity/whatsnew/unity-2018.2.9

>(1074400) - Editor: Fixed Metal Editor performance regression when running on macOS Mojave with Metal API Validation checkbox enabled.


I didn't try those myself but maybe someone else has and could say whether that fixed the issue?

 

Any news? How is the performance?

 

I’m able to keep working but I had to turn metal off, it crashes unity whenever I turn it on

 

That‘s sad... because we rely heavily on metal. Hope to get a statement from a unity dev about unity and mojave.

 

Also in the patched Unity version or in previous ones?

 

How's everyone's performance now that 2018.3 is out? Still font rendering issues?

I have been avoiding upgrading to Mojave because of concerns about Unity editor performance/reliability.

 

I'm on 2017.4 and everything's been great so far. No issues whatsoever.

 

I'm still on the fence myself about upgrading to Mojave because there hasn't been anyone on the forums that is saying that it working just fine. I figured it's just because most people only go the the forums when something is wrong and people don't usually go back to update when things run smooth again.

 

I'm watching this carefully, because Xcode 10.2 only works on Mojave, so soon-ish all IOS devs will have to upgrade to Unity on Mojave. Something to think about.

 

Fixed in https://unity3d.com/unity/whatsnew/unity-2018.2.9

 

No it's not.