LONG TERM SUPPORT RELEASE

Unity 2019 LTS

The LTS stream offers a stable version of Unity for those who want to lock in their productions on a specific version of Unity for maximum stability.

The latest long-term support release of Unity

With the LTS and the TECH stream releases to choose from, you can pick the release that best fits your needs, depending on where you are in your development cycle. For creators who are about to embark on projects that are past the prototyping phase, Unity 2019.4 LTS provides stable, high-quality features that are supported for two years. You can confidently create your projects with that version during development and release.

Unity 2019 LTS stream has the same feature set as the 2019.3 TECH stream release. 

Explore Unity 2019 features

Since the release of 2018 LTS, we’ve added hundreds of improvements and new features. Unity 2019 LTS makes artists and designers more productive with better tools and a new Editor UI. Our Scriptable Render Pipeline (SRP) technology, now out of Preview, helps you achieve best-in-class graphics on all platforms. We’ve also optimized Unity under the hood to facilitate more immersive experiences at runtime and to accelerate your project iterations.

Graphics

If you need scalability for all supported platforms, high performance, and best-in-class visual quality, the Universal Render Pipeline is our recommended production-ready solution. To help you achieve stunning high-fidelity graphics on high-end hardware (PC, consoles, and future hardware), the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) is now out of Preview, which means those of you already working with it will have a consistent upgrade path.

Scripting

Our default code editor is now Visual Studio 2019, and IDE support has moved to packages. This LTS release also brings huge improvements to profiling, such as Player Deep Profiling and Call Stacks support. In Unity 2019 LTS, the Burst Compiler optimizes your output for the platform you’re compiling for, which can lead to huge performance improvements. Burst Compiler 1.3 offers native debugging and improved scalability and usability. .NET 4.x is now the default scripting runtime. Incremental Garbage Collection minimizes garbage collection spikes. Also, several quality-of-life improvements to scripting workflows reduce iteration times and make you more productive.

Artist and designer tools

Shader Graph is now our production-ready solution for building shaders visually. Visual Effect Graph empowers you to create beautiful VFX in real-time, without coding, and is now compatible with Shader Graph. Unity 2019 also helps artists achieve more, directly within the Unity Editor, with new and improved terrain tools, as well as ProBuilder, our unique hybrid of 3D modeling and level design tools.

Editor updates

We’ve given the Editor UI a new look and feel by updating icons, fonts, and user feedback systems. Unity 2019 LTS increases clarity in the Editor, so creators can focus more on their content. Since Unity 2018 LTS, we’ve also added loads of workflow improvements to make you more productive in the Editor, such as Prefab Asset Editing in Inspector, Quick Search, Presets and Shortcut Manager. Unity 2019 LTS uses Asset Import Pipeline V2 to provide you with asset-dependency tracking and many other improvements, laying the foundation of a more reliable, performant and scalable pipeline and speeding up your import times significantly.

Platforms

For mobile developers who aim to push mobile graphics and performance, Unity 2019 LTS brings improvements such as on-demand rendering, Adaptive Performance and improved OpenGL support

Throughout 2019, we’ve also added and polished lots of tools for augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) developers. AR Foundation, our framework for multiplatform AR development, gives you the power to build your app once and deploy across ARKit, ARCore, Magic Leap and HoloLens platforms. With the High Definition Render Pipeline for VR, you can push your VR experiences to the next level of fidelity without sacrificing performance.

We now also offer support for approved developers to create and ship their games on Google’s Stadia cloud gaming platform.

Upgrading from Unity 2018 LTS

We prepared a series of upgrade guides to help you go from Unity 2017 LTS or Unity 2018 LTS to Unity 2019 LTS. For complex productions with a high number of dependencies, find out how our Success Plans can ensure the upgrade process goes smoothly.

What to expect from Unity LTS

Making the current LTS stream the most stable version of Unity is our top priority. Biweekly updates are intended to address crashes, regressions, issues that affect the wider community or console SDK/XDKs, and any major issues that would prevent a large number of developers from shipping their projects.

Unity release plans

We’re committed to supporting 2019.4 LTS releases with biweekly fixes until mid-2021, and then monthly updates until mid-2022. 

Unity 2018.4 is now the legacy LTS and will be updated once every month until it reaches the end of its support cycle in spring 2021.

Archive

Looking for a specific Unity LTS release? We’ve organized all LTS releases in one simple archive page. Or subscribe to our RSS feed and get access to the latest LTS as soon as it’s released.

FAQ

What’s an LTS release?

The last TECH stream release of the year becomes a Long-Term Support (LTS) release and receives continued support for another two years in the form of biweekly updates with bug fixes. In terms of versioning, we increment the final TECH stream release of the year by one and add “LTS” (for example, TECH stream release 2018.3 became 2018.4 LTS).

The LTS releases do not include any new features or breaking API changes compared to the TECH stream releases that they are based on. Their updates address crashes, regressions, issues that affect the wider community or console SDK/XDKs, and any major issues that would prevent a large number of developers from shipping their games or apps.

The LTS stream is for developers who want to develop and ship their projects on the most-stable version and remain on this version for an extended period.

What is a TECH stream release?

TECH stream releases are for developers who want to access the latest features and capabilities. The 2019 TECH stream had three releases (2019.1, 2019.2, and 2019.3). We add updates and bug fixes to the current TECH stream release on a weekly basis until the next TECH release is officially launched; then the cycle begins again.

What new features does Unity 2019.4 have?

Unity 2019.4, which we also refer to as Unity 2019 LTS, doesn’t have any new features, compared to Unity 2019.3. Updates to Unity 2019.4 include only fixes for crashes, regressions, issues that affect the wider community or console SDK/XDKs, and any major issues that would prevent a large number of developers from shipping their games or apps.

Which version of Unity should I use?

If you are in production or close to release, we recommend the latest LTS release. If you want to use the latest Unity features in your project or are just getting started with production, the TECH stream is recommended.

How often is Unity 2019 updated?

The 2019.4 LTS releases will receive biweekly fixes until mid-2021, and then monthly updates until mid-2022.

Are you going to backport fixes from Unity 2020.1 and 2020.2 to Unity 2019 LTS?

Yes. Generally, our process is to fix bugs in the next release of Unity, and then backport the fixes to current TECH streams and LTS branches. The exact mechanics for doing that depend on the nature of the bug, the dependencies it may have to other components, and other factors. We have a team fully engaged to backport fixes to Unity 2019 LTS.

What’s in your alpha and beta releases, and how do I get them?

Alphas are the first public releases of a new TECH stream version of Unity. During the alpha phase, we’re progressively adding all the new features that are scheduled to be part of the final release. At the same time, the features get tested collectively for the first time. While a TECH stream version is in alpha, we release updates with new features on a weekly basis until we reach feature completeness. As such, alphas come with a higher stability risk than beta releases, which are feature-complete and receive only stabilizing updates. With both alphas and betas, you have an opportunity to influence our development process by using the new features and providing feedback via forums and bug reports.

Because there may be feature-stability issues with these early releases, we do not recommend them for projects in production; we highly recommend that you back up any project before you open it with an alpha or beta release.

Both our alpha and beta releases are open to everyone – no signup is required. Get started by downloading them from the Unity Hub.

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