Getting Started With Android

“I want to put a game on an Android phones. What is the first step?”

Quickstart

  • If you want to run a game in the editor on a phone in general, see Unity Remote.

  • If you want to build and run a game on an android device see Unity Android Build (Requires a MAC).

Testing Your Game On Devices

Unity Android Build

Note

Here are some links that helped me with this process:

Note

The following steps were done using:

  • A machine running Windows 10.

  1. Add Android build support to your unity installation. You can add Android Build Support inside Unity Hub by navigating to the Installs tab, clicking the triple dots / cog icon next to your chosen installation, and selecting Add Modules. From there you can select and download Android build support.

  2. Open up your unity project and navigate to Edit > Preferences. Select the External Tools category on the left hand side. If you then scroll to the bottom you should see that All android JDK, SDK, NDK, and other elements are installed with unity. If this is not the case, retry the android build support installation step above.

  3. Go to File > Build Settings. Under the Platform section select Android and press the Switch Platform button on the lower right hand side of the window.

  4. On your Android smartphone, enable developer mode. This setting may vary from phone to phone so you should look up the process for your device online.

  5. Once developer mode is enabled you should then have access to a developer options panel. We will enable the options for:

    • USB Debugging (to build to our phone)

    • Stay Awake (Screen will not turn off while your phone is plugged in).

  6. Now plug your phone into your computer. On your phone, if there is a popup asking you to allow USB debugging, select the allow option.

  7. Go to File > Build Settings and under the Android settings locate the Run Device dropdown. Click the Refresh button next to the dropdown and after the refresh you should be able to select your device from the device drop down.

  8. On build settings locate the Development Build checkbox and check it. This will allow us to build to our phone without requiring a application key.

  9. Before building to your phone, visit Edit > Project Settings and navigate to the Player section on the left. From here you can set the Company Name, Product Name, and Version number. Below this you can click on the android tab to set icons for your device as well as other settings. Some important settings to consider are listed below:

    • Package Name:

      • Go to Edit > Project Settings under the Player section, select the android tab. Under the Other Settings dropdown under the Identification section, check the Override Default Package Name and set the name to “com.[Company Name].[Product Name]”

    • Target API Level:

      • The Google Play store has a target API Level requirement: https://developer.android.com/google/play/requirements/target-sdk .

      • Go to Edit > Project Settings under the Player section, select the android tab. Under the Other Settings dropdown under the Identification section, set the Minimum API level to the Google Play store minimum, and the Target API Level to highest installed.

  10. Go to File > Build Settings and, with android select build and run and then choose a folder to build to and the name of the .apk file. Sometimes a window may pop up telling you may be missing support for an API level. If so clidk the Update Android SDK button. If the software of the device does not meet the API level then you will have to go back into your project settings and set the Minimum API level to the level of your device.

    Note

    On the play store if you do not support the correct API version you will recieve an error when trying to run the game.

    Note

    The next time you build on your device you can simply overwrite the preexisting apk file with the new one.

  11. Once the build is complete the game should start to run on your device.

Unity Android Studio

  1. Go to File > Build Settings and select the android option.

  2. Make sure to uncheck the Build App Bundle setting.

  3. Click the build button and and choose a location to save the APK file to.

  4. Connect your android device to your computer and open Android Studio

  5. In the terminal navigate to the directory where your APK file is located.

  6. to install the apk to the device, run the command:

    adb install YourApkName.apk

    If you are overriding an existing apk run the command with a -r flag:

    adb install -r YourApkName.apk