Unity Remote is a downloadable application that helps with Android, iOS, and tvOS development. Unity Remote connects your target device to the Unity Editor and displays the visual output from the Editor on the target device’s screen at a reduced framerate. It also sends live inputs from the target device back to the running project in Unity. This is useful to see how an application looks and handles on the target device without creating a build.
The target device streams the following input data back to the Editor:
The Unity Editor still performs the application’s actual processing on the desktop machine. This means that performance is not an accurate reflection of how the built application performs on the target device. To get a more accurate assessment of the application’s performance, make sure to occasionally build the application and test the build on the target device.
Unity Remote supports Android, iOS, and tvOS devices. To connect Unity Remote to an Android device, you need to have the Android SDK on your development machine. To specify the location of your Android SDK, go to Edit > Preferences (macOS: Unity > Preferences).
Note: Unity Remote replaces the iOS Remote and Android Remote applications from earlier versions of Unity. Unity no longer supports these older applications.
To set up Unity Remote:
Download the Unity Remote application from Google Play.
After you install Unity Remote on the target device, run Unity Remote then connect the target device to your computer. To do this for Android, use a USB connection.
With the target device connected to your computer, the Unity Editor should be able to see it. To connect Unity Remote on the target device to the Unity Editor:
Important: Unity doesn’t support Unity Remote on multiple connected Android devices. To resolve this, Unity automatically picks the first Android device it finds. However, you can have multiple iOS/tvOS devices and one Android device connected at the same time. All of these connected devices appear in the Device lists.
In the Editor, click the Play button to see the application appear on the target device and in the Game View. As the application runs, Unity Remote streams input back to the Unity Editor and your scripts handle the inputs as if the scripts were running on the target device itself.
When you use Unity Remote, the application actually runs in the Editor, and Unity streams the visual content to the target device. The bandwidth between the Editor and the device is limited so Unity compresses the stream for transmission. The default compression method is JPEG which is a lossy compression method that reduces the image quality.
One way to improve image quality on Unity Remote is to change the compression method to PNG. PNG is a lossless compression method that uses more bandwidth but doesn’t reduce the image quality. To change the compression method to PNG:
By default, when Unity streams the application to Unity Remote, it downsizes the application’s resolution. This results in a smaller image that reduces image quality but has a lower bandwidth requirement and produces better runtime performance. To preview your application at the application’s full resolution:
Open Editor settings (menu: Edit > Project Settings > Editor).
In the Unity Remote section, set Resolution to Normal.