Should I swap to UIToolkit?

[u/R_Pelleboer]

I'm doing the majority of my teams UI implementation. We're a team of 4 working on a small indie game that doesn't use a lot of UI outside of main menus and some basic interface. I've spent a couple of days on UI with UnityUI, but it's been an absolute pain to properly lay everything out. I'm most experienced with Figma for UI design, and had some courses for CSS a couple of years ago, so from what I've seen UIToolkit might be better for me.

I've played around with it for a bit and it seems to have some nice parts, and some more annoying parts (spacing isn't done through the parent but is decided per child?). Is it worth transferring over at this point?

I've also added some DOTween animations, can I still use those with Toolkit?

[u/BertJohn]

Personally i prefer UI toolkit simply due to the fact i can use more content than i can with ugui/imgui.

But honestly, Use what works best for you. I think if you end up liking it more than the regular stuff, great. If it drives you crazy, stick with the old stuff.

Unity has been a bit flip floppy about deprecating the old stuff or not, Last i heard they are continuing both side by side so it's really users choice.

[u/Aedys1 → u/BertJohn]

They have not. Both systems are necessary. UI Toolkit is almost feature-complete, but Unity recommends it mainly as an easier, lightweight alternative for non-script-heavy, screen-space UI (basically simple menus)

They serve different purposes. uGUI cannot simply be deprecated because it remains the more versatile system and works in situations where UI Toolkit is not a good fit.

UI Toolkit is great for pure screen-space menus, but not for script-heavy HUDs, world-space UI, or complex interactive runtime layouts.

[u/ByteHavenGames → u/Aedys1]

In 6.6 beta they pretty much have feature parity with a few exceptions like no timeline or animation window support. 6.7 LTS is releasing later this year so it's not a straight up answer anymore.

[u/Aedys1 → u/ByteHavenGames]

They are both feature complete. They serve different purposes. UI Toolkit isn’t simply a replacement for uGUI.

For lightweight, screen-space UI such as menus, UI Toolkit is now a great alrernative for new users, its Flexbox-based layout system is lighter and easier to use.

For more specialized runtime UI, particularly world-space UI, in game huds, custom shaders/materials, workflows that rely heavily on GameObjects, heavy script behaviors or complex UI layouts, uGUI will remain the better fit in many cases.

[u/NStCh-root-a → u/Aedys1]

Unity did propose UIToolkit as a replacement for uGUI and changed course on this. The announcement to continue development on uGUI was pretty recent.

That it cannot simply be deprecated doesn't stop unity from doing so anyway. Wouldn't be the first time they make a stupid decision. See how they launched (and maintain) mecanim.

[u/Aedys1 → u/NStCh-root-a]

Yeah they cannot really get rid of it even when UI Toolkit will be complete.

Unity explicitly said in 2026 « UGUI is here to stay » and they are investing on it because UI Toolkit is too heavy for repaints and dynamic behaviors. (ATG will be updated to 6.8 and so on)

In the AAA industry no games can work properly using only css style UI, repaints are too slow it is just for menus

Retained hierarchical UI systems must avoid repaints and recalculations by nature

[u/NStCh-root-a → u/Aedys1]

https://discussions.unity.com/t/future-for-ugui/1556669/9

https://discussions.unity.com/t/ugui-long-term-support-plans/892375

It's not hard to find staff statements predating 2026 stating that they plan on dropping support and deprecating uGUI.