Building games for devices like the iPhone and iPad requires a different approach than you would use for desktop PC games. Unlike the PC market, your target hardware is standardized and not as fast or powerful as a computer with a dedicated video card. Because of this, you will have to approach the development of your games for these platforms a little differently. Also, the features available in Unity for iOSApple’s mobile operating system. More info
See in Glossary differ slightly from those for desktop PCs.
You don’t need an Apple Developer account to build to devices; any Apple ID is sufficient for building only to your own device for testing.
However, we recommend that you set up your Apple Developer account before proceeding because you will need it to use Unity to its full potential with iOS. This includes establishing your team, adding your devices, and finalizing your provisioning profiles. All this setup is performed through Apple’s Developer website. Since this is a complex process, we have provided a basic outline of the tasks that must be completed, which can be referred to alongside the step-by-step instructions at Apple’s iPhone Developer portal.
When you build the Unity iOS game an XCode project is generated. This project is required to sign, compile and prepare your game for distribution. See the Unity XCode project manual page for further information.
Unity provides a number of scripting APIs to access the multi-touch screen, accelerometer, device geographical location system and much more. You can find out more about the script classes on the iOS scripting page.
Unity allows you to call custom native functions written in C, C++ or Objective-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. To find out how to bind native functions, visit the plugins page.
The Unity iOS runtime allows you to download new content and you can use this feature to implement in-app purchases. See the downloadable content manual page for further information.
See the splash screen customization page to find out how to change the image your game shows while launching.
If you are experiencing crashes on the iOS device, please consult the iOS troubleshooting page for a list of common issues and solutions. If you can’t find a solution here then please file a bug report for the crash (menu: Help > Report A Bug in the Unity editor).
Unity supports importing a variety of source format sound files. However when importing these files (with the exception of tracker files), they are always re-encoded to the build target format. By default, this format is Vorbis, though this can be overridden per platform to other formats (ADPCM, MP3 etc) if required. MP3 playback offers slightly better performance on iPhone compared with Vorbis playback.
Unity iOS does not support DXT textures. Instead, PVRTC texture compression3D Graphics hardware requires Textures to be compressed in specialized formats which are optimized for fast Texture sampling. More info
See in Glossary is natively supported by iPhone/iPad devices. Consult the texture import settings documentation to learn more about iOS texture formatsA file format for handling textures during real-time rendering by 3D graphics hardware, such as a graphics card or mobile device. More info
See in Glossary.
We recommend you use the Video Player to play video files. This supersedes the earlier Movie Texture feature.
When you visit any website, it may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. This information might be about you, your preferences or your device and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to. The information does not usually directly identify you, but it can give you a more personalized web experience. Because we respect your right to privacy, you can choose not to allow some types of cookies. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings. However, blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer.
More information
These cookies enable the website to provide enhanced functionality and personalisation. They may be set by us or by third party providers whose services we have added to our pages. If you do not allow these cookies then some or all of these services may not function properly.
These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. If you do not allow these cookies we will not know when you have visited our site, and will not be able to monitor its performance.
These cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising. Some 3rd party video providers do not allow video views without targeting cookies. If you are experiencing difficulty viewing a video, you will need to set your cookie preferences for targeting to yes if you wish to view videos from these providers. Unity does not control this.
These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems. They are usually only set in response to actions made by you which amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in or filling in forms. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not then work. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable information.