Installing Unity on Windows 10
Unity’s website is updated frequently so specific navigation instructions may change, but this will walk you through the general steps you should take that should not change much in future iterations.
First things first, navigate to Unity.com.
Once the page loads, you can choose to set up a Unity account now or wait until later. If you want to get straight to the download, click either of the “Get Started” buttons.
On the next screen, you’ll choose your license type. Unity is free to use for individuals, without any editor restrictions or distribution limitations, as long as your organizational revenue or funding does not exceed $100,000 over the last calendar year.
Click the “Individual” Tab and “Get Started” under the Personal license type.
If your revenue was greater than $100,000 or you want access to features like advanced user analytics or custom splash screens, you can select one of the premium options under “Teams.”
If there’s one sticky part of the process, it’s the next screen. In the past, this is where you would have found the download prompts, but now you’ll have to click through one more time. Click “Go here” under the “Returning Users” heading to find the download page.
Now, check the box to accept the terms and download Unity Hub.
Managing Your Versions of Unity
Since you can have multiple Unity installs on your system simultaneously, Unity Hub serves as a common staging point for all your projects, regardless of the version of Unity they were built with.
Run the installer and launch Unity Hub.
On the left-hand side, navigate down to the “Installs” tab.
Click “Add” and select the version of Unity you wish to install. Unity Hub will suggest a recommended version, which is the most recent release of the Unity LTS (long-term support). You can also choose from several other stable releases, including the most up-to-date stable version and past LTS versions, as well as the current alpha release.
What is LTS?
Unity updates frequently, with a steady stream of bug fixes and new feature implementations (and the new bugs those sometimes introduce). But updating to every new release as they come out can be fraught because your entire project needs to be updated, as well, and once that happens there’s no way to revert it back to the old version it was associated with (ok, yes there is, but it’s not fun to deal with).
Furthermore, this process can take a long time and is annoying to deal with frequently, so many teams would simply just not update the program. Ever.
Unity addressed this problem by introducing long-term support (LTS) versions a few years back. LTS versions of Unity are updated less frequently, but they do receive critical bug fixes and quality-of-life updates and are the most stable versions of the program available.
Select Your Modules
Now choose which additional components you want installed right away.
If you don’t have an IDE installed, you can choose to have Unity Hub download and install Visual Studio Community, Microsoft’s free code writing environment. In addition, you can select any platforms you’ll want to build for, including Android, iOS, Windows and WebGL. You can always add these modules later if you still haven’t decided which platforms to target.
Finally, you can choose to install Unity’s documentation locally (helpful if your internet connection is spotty, or you use Unity offline) or Chinese, Japanese or Korean language packs.
Finally, click “Done” and Unity will download and install.
