Why is the file size of unity versions growing so quickly?

News & General Discussion
1

Recently I noticed that unity 2018.4.36f1 is 5GB, 2019.4.29f1 is 8GB, 2020.3.16f1 is 13.2GB, and the 2021.2.0b8 beta is 22GB. There doesn’t seem to be any major changes in these versions that would double, triple, or even quadruple the file size. Is there any reason for the size increasing so much?

2

Do you mean installed unity size?
They are not that big at all.
My Unity 2018 has les than 3GB
2019 has below 4GB
Both 2020 and 2021 are approaching 5 GB.

But if you store your project in directory installation of Unity, directory will naturally grow.

3

I just checked my current installs which are 2020.3.16 and 2021.2.0b8 and they are 12 and 18 Gb respectively.

It will depend on which platforms you have installed of course. Mine have iOS, Android, WebGL and Windows.

There is an increase in almost 1 Gb between the versions for the PackageManager folder, ProjectTemplates seems to take a lot more space in 2021.2 for some reason.

Most of the other size increase seems to come from the PlaybackEngines, Android in particular, up from 3.7 to 5.5 Gb, a lot of this is from il2cpp now supporting x86 and x86_64 which requires more libraries. The NDK also suddenly takes up 1 more Gb for some reason.

1 Like
4

You must be downloading most of the options when you download Unity. My Unity 2021.1.6 folder is Unity with the Windows and two console build modules and is only 8GB. My Unity 2021.1.16 folder is Unity with the Windows and one console build modules and is only 5GB.

If you rely on offline documentation you don’t need a copy for every release. Just the latest release as it keeps deprecated and obsolete entries for multiple releases.

1 Like
5

This.
In the Hub, if you install a specific version and enable a specific option, or sub-options, those will be applied to subsequent installations of other versions too, unless those options/suboptions are disabled again. Opt to install the 4-5Gb worth of Android Playback Engine and NDK/SDK with a given Unity version, for example, and you’ll be adding that to subsequent other Unity installs as well.

If the OP wants to check the breakdown of what’s taking up space in their folders, they can use TreeSize or similar to get the nested space usage.