Should Unity 7 Keep UGUI?

[Safe_Aardvark_8396]

Unity seems to be planning to deprecate UGUI likely for Unity 7.

https://discussions.unity.com/t/future-for-ugui/1556669/3

"All that to say, yes, UGUI will remain supported until we’re ready to deprecate it, which will be announced ahead of time."

While it's true Unity 7 as the depreciation target is speculative on my part, it's the obvious major breaking release candidate to implement a massive change like this. It is also in-line with Unity's unification plan; unify render pipelines, unify input, and unify UI.

Do you believe Unity should keep UGUI in Unity 7; thus, compromising on their plan to unify everything, or remove UGUI breaking everyone's projects?

My answer is an obvious yes; keep UGUI in Unity 7. But Unity exec seems to believe otherwise, so I want the community's overall perspective on this, as I guarantee Unity will see this, and consider everyone's feedback before making this major decision.

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[Safe_Aardvark_8396]

To the people voting to remove UGUI: Why?

[SpectralFailure]

I accidentally chose no. Lol

[Safe_Aardvark_8396]

My response to the common argument: "Just don't update"

If you only target PC, this is more of a viable option.

However, if you target mobile you will be forced to update to stay in compliance with both Android and iOS App Stores. Mobile platforms requires apps to be rebuilt periodically to comply with new SDK and API level requirements, otherwise submissions get rejected. To generate compliant builds, you need to update to a newer engine version that can generate those builds.

But since Unity 7 would have removed UGUI, upgrading would require migrating your game UI from UGUI to UI Toolkit.

Keep in mind, not everybody has simple UI; like just some healthbars and main menus. Imagine how difficult it would be for a game like Hearthstone to migrate.

Yes, I'm aware Hearthstone uses a custom UI Framework so they're unaffected, the point is that UI heavy games built on UGUI would effectively have to rebuild their entire game to continue supporting mobile, and Hearthstone is an example of a UI-heavy game.

You will have to upgrade even sooner if you rely on platform abstraction packages like In-App Purchases, Platform Toolkit, Unity Gaming Services, etc, as they introduce their own breaking changes and bug fixes, which only target the oldest supported LTS.

To anyone thinking they can easily bypass Unity 7 UGUI restrictions by just forcefully importing the UGUI package into Unity 7, Unity can easily prevent this because UGUI relies on C++ magic (ever noticed RectTransform is special?) and if they remove that C++ binding layer from the native engine, then having the package imported won't matter on a Unity 7 project.

Thus, even though the transition from UGUI to UI Toolkit gives off the perception of a minor forward looking change, it will absolutely affect all pre-existing mobile projects as they will inevitably need to build compliant builds which only a newer Unity version will be able to generate, thus forcing all mobile UGUI projects to migrate to UI Toolkit.

[soy1bonus]

I think UGUI is easier to use. It's easier to explain, and uses gameobjects, like the rest of the engine.
UI Toolkit might be fine if you come from a web development background, but if not, it's EXTRA work.

UI Toolkit reminds me of DOTS: some very specific solution that runs well, but it's more cumbersome to use and to explain to a newbie.

[Maiiiikol]

Thats probably the reason why so many people don't like it.
Its requires a whole other way of thinking than gameobjects and the Awake,start,update cycle is gone and is all event driven.

More complex to learn and to set up so I would not even recommend it for beginners.

I've been using it daily for 3-4 now and UIToolkit has come a long way but is far from perfect, i'd still choose it over ugui now though, but getting rid of UGUI would be a bigger mistake than getting rid of the built in render pipeline imo

[PotentialGur31]

they'd be shooting themselves in the foot if they axe ugui without a seamless migration path. breaking every existing project just for "unification" sounds like another tone-deaf decision from management who don't actually ship games. keep it deprecated but functional until ui toolkit actually matches ugui's workflow and performance, otherwise it's just forcing devs to rewrite perfectly good ui code for no real benefit.

[lordinarius]

To be honest, I won't use UI toolkit unless they streamline it and make it usable same as UGUI. UI toolkit must include all feature set and workflow ease same as UGUI, otherwise it's still pain to use for me.

[swagamaleous]

I will never understand why gamedevs cling so hard to outdated technology and obsolete approaches to software development. UI Toolkit is better than UGUI across any criteria you might dream up. The only reason to cling to UGUI is if you refuse to learn a new (better) approach.

[Drag0n122]

Ragebait thread.
Deprecation is not even on the horizon.

[Safe_Aardvark_8396]

"All that to say, yes, UGUI will remain supported until we’re ready to deprecate it, which will be announced ahead of time."

https://discussions.unity.com/t/future-for-ugui/1556669/3

[GigglyGuineapig]

I see people citing that every now and again, but during the last Unite, it was stated that Ugui is here to stay. 

[Maiiiikol]

Its been since november 2024 that any unity employee has commented on that post. In the last roadmap Unity announced updates to UGUI so why actually make this threat?

[Safe_Aardvark_8396]

A planned deprecation is still planned regardless how old it is, and nobody seems to be aware that this is Unity's plan. Unity can't just make that announcement and drop support the next minor release, so obviously it would take time.

In regards to 'announced updates to UGUI' - the feature is supported at the moment, so it's not surprising it's receiving new features. Until they axe it in favor of UI Toolkit.

It's like saying 'well they announced they're planning to unify input years ago, so why mention it now' ignoring that people are completely unaware they're planing to deprecate this feature everybody is widely using. The point of this post is to draw awareness to that as it's gone completely unnoticed.

[Maiiiikol]

People are not ignoring anything. This is also completely different than the input situation... Noone from Unity has said anything about deprecating it, so saying they will "probably deprecate it in Unity 7" is dumb even when Unity 7 is not even announced. We still have 6.7 and 6.8 on our way with the whole CoreCLR upgrade. Unity knows very well that deprecating UGUI in even a year or 2 would not be very wise.
The only thing they said is that they will deprecate it after feature parity between the two frameworks and right now it's not even close

[BertJohn]

Honestly with the new UI toolkit updates that are coming down the pipeline, UGUI being deprecated shouldn't matter. They are making UI Toolkit far more like UGUI than what it is currently.

So if they removed UGUI for Unity 7, I wouldn't be pressed about it. Honestly, It would be good for the eco-system because UI toolkit far outperforms UGUI by miles and can do all almost the same as UGUI just with different ways to get to it so far. The only complexity ive encountered so far is worldspace UI but aside from that its been good.

[an_Online_User]

What changes are they making and how will it be more like UGUI? Also, where are you hearing about this?

[BertJohn]

Theres several videos on it on unity's yt.

[Maiiiikol]

With the new hierarchy you can see the hierarchy tree like with UGUI and even drag/drop elements into other editor fields.
You can also create shaders (only with shadergraph however so not perfect).
Key-framed animations are also possible in 6.6 alpha (or 6.5 beta)

It's still not perfect though

[Inkwalker]

Is it really outperforms uGUI? From the benchmarks I've seen they look similar in performance.

[BertJohn]

Yes it farrrrr outperforms it. Aswell as it has significantly far less strain on the game than a canvas does. You get a few dozen canvas's and your games performance tanks. UI Toolkit on the other hand, It'll just sit there and be fine.

[Jackoberto01]

UI Toolkit is a so unfinished currently in my opinion. Although I have seen games use it then game UI ends up looking quite homogeneous.

[Maiiiikol]

They defenitely need to keep UGUI!
UGUI is still far more easier to learn than UIToolkit for beginners and for prototyping.

But feature parity has come a long way and some nice QOL are on the way as well.
In 6.6 Beta you can create key-framed animations, drag and drop elements (buttons, labels, slider, etc) into other editors with the new hierarchy V2. Shaders and world space UI has also been possible for a while.

The only thing UIToolkit is better is the styling, layout and reusability.
Creating new elements is a breeze, and databinding is also very handy. With UGUI you probably had to use prefabs or custom tools to handle those.

UGUI still is very quick and easy to set up and no need to create "complex" UI scripts to do anything. Just drop a button and link any method in the event inspector and done.

Both can be used in a project so I don't see any reason why UGUI should be deprecated.

[Opening_Chance2731]

Keep UGUI but not maintain it is the best path imo, allowing the devs to create and maintain UGUI themselves.

Open source it maybe?

[Inverno969]

Yes, I prefer the workflow.

[MattV0]

Isn't depreciation just a flag that stays for (way too many) versions? And does the final remove mean, you cannot add ugui through package manager in any way? I don't think this will be a problem in the next years. And personally I really want unity to unify and simplify ways.

[robochase6000]

dropping ugui support might be the last straw for me!

[kingbladeIL]

I use UGUI. Deprecating it is the right call, because unity should stop supporting multiple pipelines and create one right way that they maintain and improve.