In serious need of Unity help on OSX

Unity Engine
1

I’m having major issues with Unity on OSX. I accidentally downloaded the wrong version initially. When I started getting error messages, I noticed my mistake so I tried a complete uninstall and reinstall.

When I did the uninstall I deleted:
/Applications/Unity
~/New Unity Project
~/Library/Application Support/Default Company
~/Library/Caches/com.unity3d.UnityEditor
~/Library/Logs/Unity
~/Library?Preferences/Unity
~/Library/Preferences/com.unity3d.UnityEditor5.x.plist
~/Library/Preferences/unity.DefaultCompany.NewProjct.plist
~/Library/Unity
/Library/Application Support/Unity

I then downloaded the right version and tried to run it. I think I may have missed some deeply hidden files that need to be uninstalled from the previous incorrect install because when I try to run the right version I get error messages and it seems to think the assets were already installed, so it didn’t reinstall them.

When I run the freshly installed version, it asks me to sign in. I’m able to do that with no problem, and then it checks for a license. Not finding one, I select personal edition, agree to the requirements, it is activated, and I try to start using it. I am able to start a new project, but when it starts compiling I get an error message. It says:

Copying File Failed
Copying ~/Library/Preferences/Unity/Editor-5.x/Layouts/Default.wlt to Library/CurrentLayout.dwlt: No such file or directory

I can try again, but no matter how many times I try it doesn’t work. The other choices are cancel or force quit. I’ve tried both in my series of uninstalls and reinstalls, and they seem to have the same result. It will continue trying to open before sending another error message. It reads:

Failed to Load Window Layout
This can happen if layout contains custom windows and there are compile errors in the project.

At this point I can Load Default Layout, Revert Factory Settings, or Quit. Again they all seem to have the same result. I am eventually taken into the Unity app, but there is virtually nothing loaded. I can’t change the layout, because there are not alternate options. There is nothing listed in the assets folder. When I go to import a package, the only option available is custom package (I remember there being many more initially). Attempting to import a package, I can select it, but when I do so I get an error saying:

Nothing to Import!
All assets from this package are already in your project.

At this point I am unable to do just about anything in Unity. I’ve tried several uninstalls and reinstalls. I tried repairing permissions. I’ve restarted multiple times. I’ve tried patches and eventually tried other versions just to see if I could fix it. Any older versions will partially load the package, but then crash. Any newer versions say I am attempting to use obsolete packages and run an API Updater. Curiously I can run older or new versions of Unity, just can’t install the package I need in them. I can’t do anything in the version I need until whatever the problem is fixed. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated as I’ve been working at this for 2 days and have made no progress at all.

2

Does all of the path ~/Library/Preferences/Unity/Editor-5.x/Layouts/ exist after attempting to run Unity at least once? If not, try creating all those folders and see if it helps.

An alternative: Create a new system user and launch Unity as that user. Does the same problem happen? If yes, something points to weirdness for UT to take a look at.

If not, there’s probably some hidden cache folder which wasn’t obvious inside the original user’s home directory. You can do it the slow way and copy one folder at a time from your original user to the new user and seeing at which point Unity breaks. Once it does you can narrow it down and find the offending file, and switch back to the original user to try deleting that file there.

3

I already tried the first idea orb. The full folder isn’t there, but I can do a full install with other versions. So I tried copying the folder over. Unfortunately I got a different error message, but still got some. I was able to start up the editor, but again no assets showed up even though I had moved a ton over.

I tried making a different user for a fresh install. Unfortunately this didn’t work either, and I got the exact same errors. I’d try on a different computer if I could, but unfortunately I don’t have access to one.

4

Fresh user should be like a new computer, if all is well with the actual computer. Desperate measure: Run the OS installer to fix up any broken files and try again with both users, but I suspect this is a Unity Technologies problem. Give their contact form a try.

5

I figured out the problem and have solved it. I figured I would post a follow up for anyone who has the same problem. I am not only running Mac OSX, but specifically High Sierra. An updated file system also came with the updated operating system. Unity has problems with the new file system. Updated versions have been patched to fix this problem, but Unity has ended support for versions 5.4 or older. If you have already installed High Sierra you have two choices. You can revert to an old OS or run Unity off a drive that hasn’t been formatted with the new file system. I always keep the hard drives from my old computers, so I had a few old ones. I deleted all Unity files off my current hard drive (the one recently formatted for High Sierra) and installed 5.2.3 on one of the old hard drives. I fired it up and sure enough it worked. It is kind of a pain to have to hook up my old hard drive and run off of it, but I was happy to finally have the version of Unity I needed up and running and wanted to help out anybody who has similar issues.

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6

luckymcd has by far the best answer I have found. But was not able to use his solutions. However, I was able to get Unity 5.3.+ running under High Sierra.

To make a long story short, we are stuck with 5.3

This is for Mac Users only trying to install Unity 5.3.+ and no other version.

So I hope this helps someone that needs 5.3 working on Macs running High Sierra or higher. This should save you precious time.

The problem: You install Unity as you always do, using the Install Assistant.
However, once when installation is complete and you try to run it. It only shows a dark grey window. Nothing else.

What you should be seeing is the Sign In screen. According to the Editor.log file, trying to load the index.html in the unity-editor-home package. To find the error, go to and open the ~/Library/Logs/Unity/Editor.log

For my situation, it mentioned an error finding the packages unity-editor-home and unityeditor-cloud-hub and also tried to load an index.html file located in the ~/Library/Unity/Packages/node_modules/unity-editor-home/dist/index.html folder.

For some reason when I install any sub version of Unity 5.3, it does not install the NODEJS packages and the LAYOUTS ( will talk about layouts after ).

The 2 packages are:
Package #1 - unity-editor-home
Package #2 - unityeditor-cloud-hub

To get these, go to Applications, Unity - Right Click Unity and Open Package Contents
Right away you will see the Contents folder. Go in there and then open the Resources->Packages folder.

So: you should see: unity-editor-home.0.0..tgz and unityeditor-cloud-hub.0.0..tgz in there. TGZ are like zip files, you can extract them. ( * does not matter the number here )

Now extract them. Just double click each TGZ file. You will see it make a folder with the contents.
Each extracted folder should contain a DIST folder
We will need to copy the contents to the Library Unity Packages folder
Open Finder, then Go To Folder-> ~/Library/Unity/Packages
You should only see a package.json. This is where you will copy the contents. Before we do this we will need to create some folders.

In the ~/Library/Unity/Packages folder → Create folder: node_modules
Inside node_modules, create another 2 folders called → unity-editor-home AND unityeditor-cloud-hub

Copy the contents of the extracted packages we did previously to these 2 folders respectively.
So you should have

~/Library/Unity/Packages/node_modules/unity-editor-home
~/Library/Unity/Packages/node_modules/unityeditor-cloud-hub

The contents of these packages will have a DIST folder
The index.html is located inside the DIST folder, from the unity-editor-home package. Unity loads this at start up.

If you have done all of this, run Unity and you should now see the login screen.

Sign in and authenticate if you have a licensed copy.

  • Missing WLT files on Editor Start up

When you try to create a new project, you should get an error that a layout is missing.

~/Library/Preferences/Unity/Editor-5.x/Layouts

You should see that the Layouts folder is empty. However, this is not right. It should contain a few WLT files.

On my Windows machine, I checked this - in folder: C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Unity\Editor-5.x\Preferences\Layouts
There are 6 WLT files here. I copied them over to the MAC - ~/Library/Preferences/Unity/Editor-5.x/Layouts

Done. Now Unity works as normal.

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