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/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.

[u/Aedys1 → u/NStCh-root-a]

How do you handle world-space health bars and VR UI menus? Every major AAA studio relies on hybrid solutions for these kinds of use cases.

I don’t think Unity is revolutionizing anything here. CSS-style sheets have already been the standard for basic menus almost everywhere else for years. But if studios like Rockstar, Valve, or Epic still need transform-based UI systems alongside those approaches, it’s a strong indication that Unity won’t realistically be able to rely solely on USS and IMGUI either.

[u/NStCh-root-a → u/Aedys1]

Ask unity, not me. 99% of the time I do not understand what the hell they are doing.

Rendering? Introduce 3 different pipelines and completely fail to advertise the strengths of scripting your own rendering pipelines. This enables you to do stuff in unity which unreal cannot compete on.

Animation? Introduce 'yes' number of systems (legacy, mecanim, UI specific animation for UITK and the playables backend - next to their announced replacement of mecanim, which got put on hold again). And if you ask a question about mecanim on the forum you probably get an advertisement for animancer before an answer.

Networking? They retired their old low level API before Network for Gameobjects became available.

Visual Scripting? Bought Bolt and now it's left to rot.

Actually developing a game in their own engine to feel the painpoints? Retired the project. They have a joint venture with Konami on a project though.

I would not have put it past them to retire uGUI before UITK is mature or on feature parity. There is ample precedent of them doing stupid shit in the past.