Unity Remote over USB

Unity Engine
,
1

To build deploy for testing to an iOS device is slow, you can use Unity Remote to test in the editor, but it works over wifi so is flaky and slow at runtime. I tweeted that it would be great if Unity Remote could work over usb and I think I found a workaround (please forgive me if this have been posted before).

This has been tested with Mac iPhone, the idea is to make your computer use your iOS device as a personal hotspot (so using the internet from the phone).

  1. Turn off your computer wifi, plug in iOS device
  2. In iOS device settings, you have to turn on personal hotspot.
  3. Your computer should now use the iOS device as a network device, if not check your settings (link)
  4. Download and run the Unity Remote app
  5. Select local then your computer name
  6. Start Unity, hit play

Here you go…

The video still looks bad, but thats the compression from Unity > Unity Remote as it was designed to work over Wifi.

Your computer is using your phone for internet now, so I’m not sure if your phone wifi is turned on if being a personal hotspot it means that traffic from your phone is going out via wifi or cellular, so don’t do anything internet intensive or you use your data up. The connection between Unity Remote isn’t using data as its a local thing.

Also, my iPad is wifi only, no cell data plan with it, and I don’t get the personal hotspot option on this device :frowning:

2

So I just tried a traceroute (from computer) whilst my phone was connected on just cellular, and with the wifi turned on, and it came out the same both times. If you try to turn off cellular, it will turn off your personal hotspot, so yes whilst you connect to your phone like this, it will use your phone data for anything on the internet that you do on the laptop, so just for testing is advised.

3

Thanks to @helvetica on Twitter for pointing this out, you don’t need to turn your computer wifi off, but just make sure the wifi is above the iphone in your service order network settings…

1609226--97672--$Screen Shot 2014-04-29 at 00.18.23.png

Doing a traceroute I can see outgoing internet from my computer is using my wifi (not the phone cellular), but please test yourself and please use with caution, I won’t be liable for you using lots of data on your phone :slight_smile:

For example if you were to run this setup all data, if your isp went down, or your router stopped, your internet usage on the mac would all go out through the phone without you knowing about it.