The Unity Hub team is rolling out the latest 3.18.0, and we are officially introducing native support for Custom Templates and a brand-new Standalone CLI!
This release is a major step toward standardizing your team’s workflows and massively speeding up your automation processes. With this update, you can:
Standardize with Custom Templates: Create new templates directly from an existing project and manage them in the brand-new Templates page.
Share Securely: Utilize template signing and verification to improve trust and consistency across your teams.
Connect to Source Control: Link your custom templates directly to GitHub, GitLab, or Unity Version Control (UVCS) repositories.
Automate Faster: Experience lightning-fast automation with the new standalone CLI, featuring startup times under 100 ms and simple commands running up to 10x faster.
Additionally, this release brings highly requested quality-of-life improvements, including a new “Size” column in the Projects table to help you manage your disk space, and a massive overhaul to our proxy support for better enterprise network reliability.
We want to hear about your experience:
How do you plan to use Custom Templates within your team’s workflow?
Have you tried the new standalone CLI, and how does the performance compare for your automation needs?
What other template or CLI features in the Hub would make your life easier?
Please share your thoughts, questions, or any issues you run into in the comments below. We’re looking forward to hearing what you think!
This release introduces a new standalone CLI for Unity Hub. Unlike the existing CLI, which runs through the Hub application, the standalone CLI is distributed as a separate binary and can be installed, updated, and used independently of Unity Hub. View documentation for the CLI here.
The existing CLI remains supported in this release.
Key updates for the standalone CLI include:
Improved CLI performance and responsiveness, with simple commands running up to 10x faster.
Reduced CLI startup time to under 100 ms, compared to roughly 5 seconds previously.
Added support for updating the standalone CLI independently with unity upgrade.
Feature parity is maintained with the existing CLI with future updates bringing new features and enhancements
The standalone CLI supports all platforms supported by the Unity Editor.
Custom Templates
Custom Templates are now officially supported, providing a standardized way to create and share project templates directly in Unity Hub.
New custom templates can be created from an existing project by selecting Save project as custom template from the project menu or from the New template button on the new Templates page.
Template creation supports defining a name, description, version, thumbnail image, and signing organization.
Template signing and verification are supported to improve trust and consistency when sharing templates across teams.
Custom templates can optionally be linked to GitHub, GitLab, or Unity Version Control (UVCS) repositories.
A new Templates page displays all templates in the selected template directory, and templates can be searched for by name or filtered by Editor.
Existing templates can be added to Unity Hub by moving them into the selected template directory, or by updating the directory in Settings > Templates to point to the local template location.
Bug fixes and improvements
Projects
Added a Size column to the Projects table that displays the disk size of each Unity project, excluding generated directories such as Library, Temp, and build artifacts.
Updated the layout of the New Project page and replaced template category tabs with a filter dropdown.
Fixed an issue where long values in expanded row content could cause the Projects table to scroll horizontally.
Installs
Updated the downloads badge in the top bar to prioritize active downloads over failed downloads.
Fixed an issue where paused downloads could sometimes fail to resume.
General
Improved proxy support across the Hub to ensure network requests consistently respect proxy configuration, including environment variables, system proxy settings, PAC files, WPAD, custom CA certificates, and fallback to direct connections when a proxy is unavailable. This also fixes issues where some downloads and services could bypass the configured proxy or fail TLS validation, and improves proxy credential handling for additional credential formats.
Added a new macOS-only setting under Settings > Appearance > Menu bar that lets you hide the Unity Hub icon from the macOS menu bar without restarting the app.
Improved the reliability of elevated install and setup flows on Windows, including better handling for subprocess output, cancellation, and cleanup.
Added security hardening improvements across the Hub, including protections against supply chain risks and OAuth-related enhancements.
Continued reducing third-party dependencies used by the Hub.
I’ve noticed that the “Opt-in for analytics” setting is effectively opt-out, as it is enabled by default. More concerningly, the setting reverts to “enabled” after every Hub upgrade.
Is this a bug? This behavior may conflict with privacy laws in certain jurisdictions. While I personally don’t mind, doesn’t this ensure that telemetry measurements occur at least once after every update? This could be a dealbreaker for some companies.
Not sure if this is the right place for this but I am trying to convert a project to a custom template. I am running into this error “Your project settings will result in a path length that exceeds the character limit. Please shorten the path.”
It is also worth noting that I cannot make the project either it gives me a black “Create Project” button.
I’d like to explore the new CLI but how do you install it for macoOS? I’ve looked at the documentation, but it just sends you to the unity.com/download page, which automatically downloads Unity Hub, with no mention of the CLI.
Is there actually a separate binary on macOS? Where do you get it?
Still same issue since 3.17: Account token doesn’t work after logging in, no access to bought assets (package manager) behind company firewall. Using unity hub 3.16 works fine. Please fix that bs asap. Also Bug reporting doesn’t work anymore within the hub behind a firewall either, so please don’t ask us to report there. (We opened all endpoints and domain according to documentation. Again: 3.16 works fine)
Thank you so much for custom templates - maybe I can finally get a pared-down URP one!
But a question - how does the template work does it just record a list of packages and initial asset folder? It is not limited to specific package versions or anything is it?
Because I do not see any documentation on templates yet
Edit: Hmm and template tgz includes huge Library folder so comes up to 38Mb for brand new project template
And not saving project settings leads to oddities like “Warning this project is using the new input system…”
Thanks @andyz for trying it out. Docs are still catching up, but custom templates currently cover the simpler case: Hub packages the project’s Assets and Packages, preserves package versions from manifest.json, and associates the template with the Editor version it was created from.
Project settings are optional. If they’re not included, you may see warnings like the Input System one because the package is present but the matching setting is not. For URP/Input System-style setup, enable “Keep project settings”.
The Library size is fair feedback too. The current archive can include some Library cache data, which is why a new template can still be larger than expected.
We’re currently investigating Hub startup performance and plan to improve it. Thanks for filing the bug report; it’s especially helpful because startup issues can vary a lot by machine setup, installed Editors/modules, projects, network state, and account state.
Honestly, I don’t care about template size. I do care about initial project creation time. So I’d love for the entire library to (optionally) be included in the template.
If I could have a bug report template that was just a barebones URP project that was preimported, that’d be a huge upgrade. Creating a new project is like 1 minute of importing the same damn packages that my computer has already imported a million times.
The goal should be for “new project” with a template to take approximately as long as “open project” for the project the template was based on.
There’s currently an error in the documentation that sends people to the general Hub download page. Thanks for flagging this, we’re actively fixing it.
In the meantime, you can try the new Unity CLI with these install commands:
Do the official templates use fixed package versions also?
Is there no way we can say use this template but allow upgrading to newer Unity version and update the packages to latest? This would be slower (at least on first go) but if we have to renew templates each time we upgrade Unity it would be troublesome
Official templates are versioned for the Editor they ship with, so they aren’t “always latest package” recipes; custom templates work similarly today by preserving the package versions from the source project’s manifest.json and tying the template to that Editor version. There isn’t currently a Hub option to use a template with a newer Unity version and auto-upgrade packages, so for now you’d upgrade the source project, let Unity/UPM migrate it, then save a new template version. This is useful feedback as we look at improving custom templates.
The setting should not reset after a Hub upgrade, so that sounds like a bug rather than intended behavior. We’ll dig into it, including whether anything could be sent before the saved preference is restored, since I agree this matters a lot for privacy-sensitive users and managed company environments.
Improved proxy support across the Hub to ensure network requests consistently respect proxy configuration, including environment variables, system proxy settings, PAC files, WPAD, custom CA certificates, and fallback to direct connections when a proxy is unavailable. This also fixes issues where some downloads and services could bypass the configured proxy or fail TLS validation, and improves proxy credential handling for additional credential formats.
For years, ZScaler on our company machines has been doing some custom CA certificate nonsense that causes the installation of Android components alongside Unity Editor installs to fail:
Sadly, 3.18.0 did not fix this issue. We do get this issue (“unable to get local issuer certificate”) with Unity Package Manager as well, but that is fixable by adding special cert.pem and upmconfig.toml files to C:\ProgramData\Unity\config. It seems like Unity Hub does not use those same files.
Did 3.18.0 perhaps add another way to point Unity Hub at CA cert files, or otherwise fix this issue with downloading Android components onto a machine with ZScaler throwing a wrench into the works?
