New Editor Theme

[benoitd_unity]

Hi everyone,

As we’re approaching the release of the refreshed Unity Editor Theme, it’s important for us to get your feedback. We also want to minimize the impact of updating your editor extensions. To achieve this, it would be very helpful if you could test your extensions with this new Unity build.

This refreshed theme comes with a lot of changes to the editor styles and it will affect your UI at varying degrees, more so if you reused Editor styles for purposes other than what they were designed for.

Here’s a transition guide to help you fix the most common issues we have found so far.

If you encounter any issues related to the look and feel that cannot be fixed with minor style update to your extension, please report them in this thread.

Here’s where you can get the latest editor build containing the refresh theme. Please remember this is an experimental build and can be unstable.

Here are the goals we’ve defined for the effort:

Quality: We want Unity to be experienced as a modern and professional software offering that is maintained, trustworthy and capable, rather than old or outdated.
Familiarity: Aligned with the Unity brand and familiar to users of other DCC software in the industry.
Accessibility: An accessible user interface that’s open to a wider range of users and designed with all abilities in mind.
Improve Usability: Clearer interface, visual hierarchy, legibility and streamlined workflows to help users focus on completing tasks and create content efficiently.

The preview that we’ve shared in this thread is just the beginning. It’s a work in progress and not representative of what the final product will look like when we ship it. We know we still have a lot of work to do. Evolving the Unity UX is a very iterative process and your feedback is essential to help us achieve our goals. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and please keep it coming. We’re listening and iterating fast based on your input and will keep you posted as we progress from here.

[Peter77]

Thank you for providing an early build and giving us a chance to fix our extensions prior its release.

It would be even more useful during testing and fixing our tools, if you allow us to activate the Light and Dark theme in the provided editor build, regardless of the License.

EDIT: I mean for a given time frame only, until we tested and fixed our tools, not providing dark theme for free in general.

[Peter77]

My feedback after using the Light theme for about 10 minutes only (Windows 10, 1920x1080 resolution).

The font seems to be smaller and blurrier than in previous Unity versions. I find this very exhausting to look at and have to take a break from Unity after those 10 minutes already. Other than that, I like the flat style. It looks fresh. Good work!

Screenshot

EDIT
It took me about an hour to fix my “Texture Overview” extension to work with Unity 2019’s new editor UI, but the UI of this extension isn’t very complex to be fair.

A few GUI controls now seem to have different sizes and I had to fix this by moving elements a few pixels to compensate.

I used EditorStyles.toolbar.normal.background in a few places, which now seems to be null.

I noticed the editor files are not in an “Editor” directory in the provided zip archive. Is this going to be like this in the installer as well? Because it broke some of my build scripts.

[MrDude]

When are they just gonna get rid of the light theme already?
Unreal, Xenko, Godot [insert more here], you don’t hear people complaining about how the editor hurts their eyes, do you? That is unique to Unity

Unfortunately this case has been pleaded to deaf ears many times before so I don’t see them caring about your opinion that the skin that already causes eye strain is now causing eye strain faster…

They may even be doing this intentionally to force more subscriptions

[mgear]

on a quick peek, at least its not as bad as expected : ]

**please note the newer posts, its still going into worse direction…

some random comments:

• blurry text as mentioned earlier^

• light gray text on light gray background…bit hard to see
  old: easy to see black text
  
  new: has small lighter color text
  

• i don’t think that small hat is better symbol for help or documentation (and since its so small, cannot clearly see its a hat either)

• dark text or icon on dark background
  

• vertical scrollbar is nearly invisible (same color as background, and scrollbar background completely same as background)
  

• clicking from one dropdown to another, requires now 1 extra click to open it (try clicking gameobject Tag dropdown, then Layer dropdown, in old version the dropdown works on first click)

• felt like maximizing/opening material was slower than in old version… (click that small > to minimize/maximize)

• old stats window was better for readability (and size, new one takes much more screenspace just for padding…)

• tab titles still have that extra width (after close button was removed)

*added

• particle system module has super micro font!
• new asset store still pretty much un-usable in asset store window

[Eric5h5]

The new theme has the same problems that every single other flat design has: removing visual information makes it harder to use. Please ask yourself, with brutal honesty, if the changes are actually an improvement, or just making stuff flat for the sake of it. For example, it’s very hard to see the difference between a text field and a drop-down. They’re all just flat rectangles with zero visual distinction, aside from the small icon on the right. Compared to the current theme, it’s harder to see drop-downs and so on since they blend in with the background more. There’s even less differentiation between components in the inspector compared to the current theme (there could stand to be more, not less). I don’t think stuff should be spaced out vertically so much, except where it would improve differentiation between sections.

It is absolutely OK for buttons to look like buttons! Really! Remove the gradients if you want, that’s immaterial, but interact-able items should be more obvious that they are interact-able items and not labels. It should be much more visually obvious which type of controls are which. (And please don’t remove the light theme; the dark theme hurts my eyes more, and this one in particular makes the inherent problems with flat designs even worse.) I want to use the Unity editor, I don’t want to admire how “fresh” it looks.

–Eric

[Rotary-Heart]

Well it took me around 2 hours to fix my dictionary drawer and after working with it for that long I do have to agree with the previous messages. My eyes hurt because of the font blurriness, button colors and scrollbar colors. I had to force my eyes way to much to work with it.

At least I was able to find a solution that works on 5.6.5-2019

[JakubSmaga]

Bug with the new universal Settings window, it’s too hard to close the window; for me it usually opens the context menu.
Also shouldn’t that option be next to the close button?

[DoctorShinobi]

@Eric5h5

The new theme has the same problems that every single other flat design has: removing visual information makes it harder to use. Please ask yourself, with brutal honesty, if the changes are actually an improvement, or just making stuff flat for the sake of it. For example, it’s very hard to see the difference between a text field and a drop-down. They’re all just flat rectangles with zero visual distinction, aside from the small icon on the right. Compared to the current theme, it’s harder to see drop-downs and so on since they blend in with the background more. There’s even less differentiation between components in the inspector compared to the current theme (there could stand to be more, not less). I don’t think stuff should be spaced out vertically so much, except where it would improve differentiation between sections.

It is absolutely OK for buttons to look like buttons! Really! Remove the gradients if you want, that’s immaterial, but interact-able items should be more obvious that they are interact-able items and not labels. It should be much more visually obvious which type of controls are which. (And please don’t remove the light theme; the dark theme hurts my eyes more, and this one in particular makes the inherent problems with flat designs even worse.) I want to use the Unity editor, I don’t want to admire how “fresh” it looks.

–Eric

I can’t stress enough how much I support this. Enough that I’m quoting your post to make sure the Unity staff doesn’t miss it.
Please, don’t downgrade Unity’s UI with flat design that removes information. I’d argue that Unity’s current UI is actually pretty good, even better than Godot and Unreal’s UI. If Unity wants to give a fresh look to the UI then it should not be any less clear and intuitive than the current UI. We don’t want another bad UI Redesign like what we had with the lithium forum skin one year ago.

[XGT08]

I would just like to say that I detest the new UI. Pure and simple. Nothing more to say. It feels like Unity these days is focused on changing UI/UX for their stuff for no good reason other than to find something to do. Did the same with As 2.0.

Please keep the current UI. If it’s not broken don’t fix it…

[JakubSmaga]

Should those icons be blue? It’s impossible to see them when they are selected.

Also is it only me or does this look really bad? (Wasted space, some things are left/right sides and some are just centered - no consistency)

[Shizola]

I like it apart from the dropdowns. I like they way the stand out in the current theme, very easy for your eyes to quickly locate them.

[Baste]

This feels like change for change’s sake. The flat look is very much the fashion now, but it simply doesn’t help much. It looks good (even better than the current one) at a glance, but I don’t think it’s helping usability in any way…

First impression with opening it is that I’m struggling to read all of the text. Your new font’s kerning is just garbage. Here’s a side-by-side from 2018.3 beta to the editor theme build:

See how tiny the text is? See how cramped all the letters are? I’ve got trouble reading that. Especially that “create” button. The new font kills readability.

People are also correct in that it’s blurry. Here’s a super-closeup of the favourites menu above:

See how much crisper the old (right-hand) text is? Take a look at those L’s in “All”. They’re two solid pixels all the way from top to bottom in the old font, and in the new font they’re a blurry mess.

Are your designers testing this on something that’s not a retina display? I’ve got a couple of good, old samsung 1080p displays in front of me, and I’m getting more nearsighted just by looking at the new UI.

Okay, so enough fonts, other things:

You introduced this in 2018.3, and I’m sad to see it stick around to the new UI. I’m talking about that blue line! It’s ugly, and drags my eyes away from what I’m looking at. There’s never been a time where I’ve been confused about what window was active.

I don’t like the new look of the drop-down button. You get what it is when it’s close-up, but it’s a button that’s never close up. It’s always tiny, and when it’s tiny it just looks like a blob. The old design of the drop-down button isn’t the greatest, but this is worse.

I also keep clicking it when I’m trying to click the X, which I never did in the old UI.

More to follow, hitting image limit

[Baste]

The dividing line between two components has gone almost entirely invisible, which makes it harder to quickly identify where a new component is. The white for that line was much better.

As a positive, you seem to have cranked up the spacing between elements. EditorGUIUtility.singleLineHeight is now 18 instead of 16. That helps the UI breathe more.

There used to be a little square to the next of the Shaded dropdown, as well as “Create” in the hierarchy and project windows. That’s gone now, and it looks really bad - those buttons should not be flush with the side of the window.

The new icons are just ugly. Flat doesn’t look good. It never did! The shading and color variance is much more comfortable to look at.
I also know that you don’t need the “C#” there since there’s only C# scripts now, but the lone hashtag is just nonsensical.

[XGT08]

Does anybody know if we will still be able to switch to classic skin? So in the same way we can switch between Pro and personal, but instead have something like Classic and Modern( )

[Baste]

While it’s lovely that the tool selection menu and the tool handle position menus now have the same height, the icons are pretty bad. First of all, like the font, some of the icons gets a bit blurry. Both the move tool and the multitool lost a bunch of crispness.

The scale tool is just utterly nonsensical - I don’t understand how it’s supposed to represent scaling? It also looks near identical with the pivot/center toggle in pivot mode, so that’s confusing.

The Pivot/Center and Local/Global toggle icons got better. I’m still not quite reading the Pivot/Center icons very well, but the old ones are just blurs, so any improvement is a good one.

I really like that there’s an outline for hovered input fields now. That’s just a straight up improvement. I really don’t like how all of the input fields has lost their one pixel drop shadow. This is back to the flat thing, they just looked more enjoyable before.

The buttons are worse, though:

That is not a button. It’s a label with a strange background. Look at how much more comfortable this old UI is:

There’s drop-shadows on the input fields, there’s a better font for the letters, there’s a drop-shadow and gradient for the button, all of that just makes it friendlier.

I’m not by definition against a redesign - there’s even some good things here. But, man is the overall picture a downgrade. Please go back to the drawing board.

[Edy]

No no please don’t do it. I’ve just tested the new UI and it’s a huge step backwards. @benoitd_unity I can understand your point, as you’re developing the new UI on Mac with a huge-res monitor. That’s fine, and it looks truly awesome there. But on Windows with average resolutions (Full HD) it’s barely usable.

• Font smoothing. I can’t emphasize how bad this is. As happens to others, it hurts my eyes to the point that I have to take a rest after a few minutes. No matter what you decide to do, please include an option in preferences to use the current Editor font. I know it will look horrible in your Mac, but I assure you it will be a lifesaver for the rest of us.
• Spacing inconsistency: smaller text but more unused space between the UI elements in the Inspector. New version looks weird compared with the previous one. Just compare the Transform and Light components between both versions in the picture below.
• New icons look good to me. That’s what I call a new fresh look. I love them!

If were to decide about the new UI:

• Adopt the new icons. They look great. I especially love the new GameObject icon in the Hierarchy window.
• Make the UI more flat by removing gradients, but keep the sizes and 3D effects so buttons look like buttons and control types can be easily differentiated.
• Keep the font sizes and spacing as they’re now in Unity 2018. Please test the new UI on Windows in FullHD! If you make it look good there, it will look great on Mac.
• Include an option in Preferences to use the actual 2018 font without smoothing.

This is how it looks on Windows, before and after. I can’t see the new UI as an improvement. Only icons are better.

@Eric5h5

The new theme has the same problems that every single other flat design has: removing visual information makes it harder to use. Please ask yourself, with brutal honesty, if the changes are actually an improvement, or just making stuff flat for the sake of it. For example, it’s very hard to see the difference between a text field and a drop-down. They’re all just flat rectangles with zero visual distinction, aside from the small icon on the right. Compared to the current theme, it’s harder to see drop-downs and so on since they blend in with the background more. There’s even less differentiation between components in the inspector compared to the current theme (there could stand to be more, not less). I don’t think stuff should be spaced out vertically so much, except where it would improve differentiation between sections.

It is absolutely OK for buttons to look like buttons! Really! Remove the gradients if you want, that’s immaterial, but interact-able items should be more obvious that they are interact-able items and not labels. It should be much more visually obvious which type of controls are which. (And please don’t remove the light theme; the dark theme hurts my eyes more, and this one in particular makes the inherent problems with flat designs even worse.) I want to use the Unity editor, I don’t want to admire how “fresh” it looks.

–Eric

@DoctorShinobi

I can’t stress enough how much I support this. Enough that I’m quoting your post to make sure the Unity staff doesn’t miss it.
Please, don’t downgrade Unity’s UI with flat design that removes information. I’d argue that Unity’s current UI is actually pretty good, even better than Godot and Unreal’s UI. If Unity wants to give a fresh look to the UI then it should not be any less clear and intuitive than the current UI. We don’t want another bad UI Redesign like what we had with the lithium forum skin one year ago.

[tommivuori]

The fonts are way too small and appear to be blurry. I have a perfectly normal vision and can barely read the text in and around the console area. I’m using Windows @ 1080p.

[XGT08]

So I’ve just decided to take this for a small spin with a plugin I am working on right now.

So there are a few issues which I think should be regarded as bugs. BeginVertical does not seem to enclose all controls as it did before. Buttons need to enclose the text. Bold font looks terrible.

I also have some horizontal toolbars sitting below one another and there is a small horizontal desync happening between the buttons. New toolbar look is simply terrible. Flat so to speak.

I sincerely can not find anything wrong with the old UI or anything good or better about the new one. This change is not necessary. Please leave the UI alone…

[Edy]

Bold text also has severe readability problems: