Unity - Making a build for iOS (via Windows)

Zaphire

Hello Everyone,

Has anyone here had any experience with exporting to the iOS platform in Unity on a windows machine and if so what the required steps are?

TheFuntastic

Step 1: Find money
Step 2: Buy a mac
Step 3: Sign up for apple developer program
Step 4: Swear.
Step 5: Repeat step 4

Sorry, you can't make an iOS compile from windows. :/

Zaphire

Well I tried to build the iOS within Unity and it created a whole bunch of files and folders ("build, Classes, Data etc") but I have NO idea what an iOS app would look like and how to load it onto a phone.

roguecode

You could go the hackintosh route, although AFAIK that breaks the TOS, so you'll want to look into that first.
Alternatively, maybe but a really cheap crappy second hand MacBook or Mac mini. You can still use your nice Windows PC to make the game, and just use the Mac for deployment.

dislekcia

Zaphire said:

Well I tried to build the iOS within Unity and it created a whole bunch of files and folders ("build, Classes, Data etc") but I have NO idea what an iOS app would look like and how to load it onto a phone.

So that stuff needs to be run through Xcode so that it can be compiled into a functioning iOS app and loaded onto a device. That's what you need the Mac for, as Apple hasn't made the iOS devkit available on anything other than MacOS.

There seems to be an iOS build environment for Windows that some dude made, but you still need to sign up for an iOS developer account and manage your keychain, etc. I have no idea if this even works or if it's a sneaky way to steal people's iOS dev credentials. Attempt at your own risk. I might give this a go later on this week, but I'm super skeptical.

But yeah, to then release and upload an app to the App Store, you need a functioning Mac as well...

TheFuntastic

There are some other options such a Mac In Cloud, that has OSX machine in the cloud you can use for compilation. But with our internet, that's going to be painful. Also, deploying to your device if you can't actually plug it in via USB is a world of pain.

Mac Mini or second hand Mac is really the only sane option if you value your time and are serious about making Unity work on iOS.

Zaphire

Thanks a lot for the info. Will definately infest in a MAC later on but for now if I want to make the game for iOS I will just dev it on PC and lend someones MAC to publish it. :)

petrc

lol, yeah! infest that mac!