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 frame rate. It also sends live inputs from the target device back to the running project in Unity. This is useful to understand 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 Unity Editor:
The Unity Editor still performs the application’s actual processing on the desktop machine. This means that the performance of the application isn’t an accurate reflection of how the built application wil perform on the target device. To get a more exact assessment of the application’s performance, build the application and test the build on the target device. Another side effect of processing the application in the Unity Editor is that the target platform is the same that you set in the Editor. This means it might not be set to the platform of the device that Unity Remote is running on. This is important to know if you use platform dependent compilation to do things like read input differently depending on whether the target platform is a desktop or mobile platform. If you do this, set the target platform to the platform that Unity Remote will run on.
Unity Remote supports Android, iOS, and tvOS devices.
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 rom the App Store.
After you install Unity Remote on the target device, run Unity Remote then connect the target device to your computer. To do this for iOS or tvOS, use iTunes on Windows or a USB connection on OS X.
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:
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.