Question Unstable as hell on macbook

First off I wanted to know if I'm the only one or if there are others with the same problems or maybe even workarounds.

I got myself a MacBook (M2 Max) and "ported" a very small project to it from Win 11 via Unity Version Control (Plastic SCM).

At first I had crashes all the time in different versions of Unity. I tried everything from LTS to 2023 Beta versions, Intel and Silicon.

Recently 2022.2.17f1 came out and it seems that it fixed a major problem that caused a lot of crashes, less crashes on the Intel version, more on the Silicon version.

I thought it's over but the editor is still in an abnormously instable state that I'm actually "scared" to work with it.

It randomly crashes at different times for different reasons but I'm almost certain it has got something to do with I/O on the Harddrive (SSD).

I would like to use the mac for unity stuff but it is so unstable, I'm too scared to progress more with my main project.

Anyone else knows maybe what versions are good, what stuff to setup in the settings and what to look for to get a stable experience or is this just usual on MacBook?
Never had a crash once on Windows.

PS: I'm so scared because even frequent saving (after any change) is not helping. Just yesterday the editor crashed again and broke a prefab irrepairable and the last backup was from before 4 days via Unity Version Control xD. Glad the main work was in scripts and not in gameobject composition so I didn't lost too much (but I could have)

Saving all the time and Pushing into VCS for every fart is not how I would like to work in fear of any next breaking crash.

 

I am sorry you are having these issues. The best thing is to report them to Unity so they can try and fix it. No reports = no fixes and it will just continue to happen

 

Of course I'm providing info to the devs.
But I can not just believe that this is the normal current state for Mac and id like people to confirm that it is or that they don't have random crashes every 30 to 60 minutes on most different occasions.
And if they don't have such problems, what versions are they using, what are their Editor and player settings. Is there something else to prevent issues.

I just want to work and create without fear and as we know, with unity, this can take really long if it's an issue not only for me.

 

Actually today I decided to do a cleanup.
Deleted the library folder and all other unnecessary files on the same directory level as the assets folder.
Also deleted assembly...csproj files, temp folder, usersettings etc. basically being left with the Assets folder, ignore.conf and the packages folder.
In the packages folder I deleted the package-lock.json and removed everything from the manifest that I thought I'm not using or needing.

Since then, everything seems way more stable, but I'm still a bit afraid.
Let's see how long it will last but I hope that this did the trick.

(Working in Unity 2022.2.17f1 on Silicon)

 

You're on a newer release than I am so I don't know how helpful this is but I haven't experienced a single crash with Unity 2021.3.15 which is the release my current work project is tied to on an M1 MacMini (16GB RAM/1TB SSD). I'm mostly using it for builds but I have made changes to scenes and scripts to test things out.

 

Try adding -force-gfx-st to your project, it might help.

 

I had this in the 2022.2.16 version as it was literally unusable without that. Thats always good to know for other people who might have issues in different silicon versions.
2022.2.17f1 seems to have fixed it. I'm not using that flag anymore and it is not having the issues like in 2022.2.16.

 

Hm. Now when I think about it, one of the suspects could be Fast Script Reload.
I know it is only working on intel but as I used it on windows, it was installed on mac as well.

Maybe it could cause problems while only residing in the codebase. At least this is one of the bigger things on the unstable side that is gone now.
I might try it out tomorrow or on the weekend to see if using that package or having it only installed causes problems.

 

Sorry, but I don't think I'll have the time to dig further into this.
But as of now, I only had one crash on 2022.2.17f1 while quitting the editor.
Else it was running stable but I noticed that the longer (days) I leave the editor open (just letting the mac sleep) the more time it takes to recompile and reload the domain etc.

So what helped was probably cleaning the project:
* Remove library folder
* Remove any settings files (might not be a solution to everyone)
* Don't use a version prior to 2022.2.17f1
* Restart editor frequently (I do it every day when I'm done in the evening)

I'm certain that the Fast Script Reload package got to do something with it as it brings its own file watchers etc. but can not prove right now.

Thx people, for giving me tips.