This section of the User Manual contains documentation on developing for the Android platform,
Before you can run code on your Android device or an Android emulator, you must set up Unity to support Android development. See Android environment setup.
If you don’t install one or more necessary components during initial setup, Unity prompts you to download missing components when you try to build a Project for Android.
Unity lets you configure build and runtime settings for your app. See Building apps for Android.
If you have a Unity Pro subscription, you can customize the splash screen that displays when the game launches. See Customizing an Android splash screen.
Unity provides scripting APIs that allow you to access input data and other settings from Android devices. See Android scripting.
You can use plug-insA set of code created outside of Unity that creates functionality in Unity. There are two kinds of plug-ins you can use in Unity: Managed plug-ins (managed .NET assemblies created with tools like Visual Studio) and Native plug-ins (platform-specific native code libraries). More info
See in Glossary to call Android functions written in C/ C++ directly from C# scriptsA piece of code that allows you to create your own Components, trigger game events, modify Component properties over time and respond to user input in any way you like. More info
See in Glossary. You can also call Java functions indirectly. See Building and using plug-ins for Android.
Unity includes support for occlusion cullingA feature that disables rendering of objects when they are not currently seen by the camera because they are obscured (occluded) by other objects. More info
See in Glossary, which disables renderingThe process of drawing graphics to the screen (or to a render texture). By default, the main camera in Unity renders its view to the screen. More info
See in Glossary of objects when they’re not currently seen by the cameraA component which creates an image of a particular viewpoint in your scene. The output is either drawn to the screen or captured as a texture. More info
See in Glossary because they’re obscured (occluded) by other objects. This is a valuable optimization method for mobile platforms. See Occlusion culling.
The Android troubleshooting guide helps you discover the cause of bugs as quickly as possible. If, after consulting the guide, you suspect the problem is being caused by Unity, file a bug report following the Unity bug reporting guidelines.
See:
Ericsson Texture CompressionA method of storing data that reduces the amount of storage space it requires. See Texture Compression, Animation Compression, Audio Compression, Build Compression.
See in Glossary (ETC) is the standard texture compression3D Graphics hardware requires Textures to be compressed in specialized formats which are optimized for fast Texture sampling. More info
See in Glossary format on Android.
ETC1 is supported on all current Android devices, but it does not support textures that have an alpha channel. ETC2 is supported on all Android devices that support OpenGL ES 3.0. It provides improved quality for RGB textures, and also supports textures with an alpha channel.
By default, Unity uses ETC1 for compressed RGB textures and ETC2 for compressed RGBA textures. If ETC2 is not supported by an Android device, the texture is decompressed at run time. This has an impact on memory usage, and also affects rendering speed.
DXT, PVRTC, ATC, and ASTC are all support textures with an alpha channel. These formats also support higher compression rates and/or better image quality, but they are only supported on a subset of Android devices.
It is possible to create separate Android distribution archives (.apk) for each of these formats and let the Android Market’s filtering system select the correct archives for different devices.
We recommend you use the Video Player to play video files. This supersedes the earlier Movie Texture feature.
Not all devices support resolutions greater than 640 × 360. Runtime checks verify device support and don’t play the movie if there’s a failure.
For Android Lollipop (5.0 and 5.1.1) and above, you can use any resolution or number of audio channels, provided the target device supports them.
Unity supports playback from asset bundles for uncompressed bundles, read directly from disk.
Playback support for compressed asset bundles is available for Android 9 and later.
Format compatibility issues are reported in the adb logcat output and are always prefixed with AndroidVideoMedia.
Watch for device-specific error messages located near the error messages in Unity: they’re not available to the engine, but often explain what the compatibility issue is.