Installation for Unity

This page shows you how to install Yarn Spinner for Unity, the Unity integration for running Yarn and Yarn Spinner scripts in your Unity-based games.

Installation for Unity

You can download and install Yarn Spinner for Unity in a variety different ways. The best ways to download and install Yarn Spinner for Unity, and the ones that support us to continue developing it the most are via Itch.io and the Unity Asset Store.

Install from Itch.io

First, visit the Yarn Spinner Itch.io Store, and click the Buy Now button, and complete the checkout process.

Once you've purchased Yarn Spinner, you'll find a Download button at the top of the page:

The download button will take you the following page, where you can download the Yarn Spinner for Unity .unitypackage:

Once you've downloaded the .unitypackage, with the Unity project you want to use it in open and ready to go, double click it. Unity will then allow you to import the package into your project:

Install from the Unity Asset Store

First, visit the Unity Asset Store page for Yarn Spinner for Unity, and add it to your cart, and complete your purchase while logged into the same Unity account you use to activate Unity.

Once you've purchased Yarn Spinner for Unity, you'll find the Add to Cart button replaced by an Open in Unity button. Click this button to launch Unity, and the Package Manager will locate your purchased package:

Once the Package Manager has located the package, you can use the Download button to fetch it:

Once Yarn Spinner for Unity has downloaded, you can use the Import button to start the process of adding it to your project:

This will trigger the Import Unity Package workflow, where you can use the Import button to add the Yarn Spinner for Unity package to your project:

And with that, you're ready to use Yarn Spinner! You might also want to download and import the Yarn Spinner for Unity Samples as a .unitypackage, from here.

You can review Unity's documentation for using the Asset Store for further guidance on working with purchased packages.

Install via OpenUPM

You can also install the Yarn Spinner package into your project using the Package Manager window in Unity. Specifically, Yarn Spinner is available via the OpenUPM registry.

In order to follow the instructions in this section, your project needs to be using Unity 2020.1 or higher. If your project is using an earlier version of Unity, we recommend installing Yarn Spinner from Git.

Where possible, we recommend installing Yarn Spinner via a purchased .unitypackage from Itch.io or the Unity Asset Store.

Setting Up the OpenUPM Registry in Your Project

Before you can install Yarn Spinner from OpenUPM, you first need to configure your project so that it knows where to get the package from.

In Unity, open the Edit menu, and choose Project Settings.
In the list of sections at the left hand side of the window, select Package Manager.

This window is where you tell Unity about where to find packages that come from registries besides Unity's built-in one.

In the Name field, type OpenUPM.
In the URL field, type https://package.openupm.com.
In the Scopes field, type dev.yarnspinner.
Click Save.

When you're done, the settings window should look like this:

You can now install Yarn Spinner itself.

Installing the Yarn Spinner package

Open the Window menu, and choose Package Manager.
In the toolbar, click Packages: In Project, and choose My Registries.

Yarn Spinner will appear in the list. Select it, and click Install.

Yarn Spinner will download and install into your project.

You can verify that everything is imported succesfully by looking for Yarn Spinner under Packages, in the Project pane.

Install from GitHub

As an alternative to downloading Yarn Spinner from OpenUPM, you can install Yarn Spinner by downloading the package directly from GitHub, where the project's source code is stored.

Where possible, we recommend installing Yarn Spinner via a purchased .unitypackage from Itch.io or the Unity Asset Store.

To install Yarn Spinner from GitHub, follow these instructions.

Make sure your system has Git (minimum version 2.14.0) installed.
In Unity, open the Window menu, and choose Package Manager.
Click the + button, and choose "Add package from git URL".
In the text field that appears, enter the following URL: &#xNAN;https://github.com/YarnSpinnerTool/YarnSpinner-Unity.git#current Be sure to type the URL exactly as it appears in this document.
The project will download and install. This might take a moment.

Yarn Spinner is an open source project. You can directly support the Yarn Spinner Team by purchasing Yarn Spinner from Itch or the Unity Asset Store, but it will always have a free option as well. To support the continued development of Yarn Spinner, purchase Yarn Spinner for Unity from one of the storefronts. This is the best way to directly support the Yarn Spinner team.

🚧 Installing the Samples

For version 3 of Yarn Spinner the samples have been removed from the main repository and made a standalone package. We did this because as the samples were growing they were becoming a larger and larger portion of the install, this was essentially bloating an install of Yarn Spinner while at the same time making development slower and more annoying. The samples are a necessary element of Yarn Spinner so instead of being treated like an afterthought they have been spun out into their own thing. Now they can be developed, improved, tested, have their own dependancies, and share a common sample codebase without needing to impact the rest of Yarn Spinner, meaning more—and better—samples than in the past.

The best way to install the samples is to use the Samples button on the inspector of any Dialogue Runner, Yarn Project, or Yarn Script. Or by navigating to Window -> Yarn Spinner -> Install Samples Package.

Clicking on this will work out the best way to install the samples depending on how you installed Yarn Spinner itself.

Manually Installing the Samples

While the best way to install samples is the above, depending on your environment and device setup this might not be possible. In those circumstances you will need to manually install the samples, which is what this section is about.

This is a standard unity package so if you have a workflow around packages this will just work with it.

Inside your browser navigate to the samples site: https://github.com/YarnSpinnerTool/YarnSpinner-Unity-Samples
Click on the Code button and from the dropdown select the Download Zip option

Save this zip somewhere useful and unzip it

This folder now contains the samples package and it's time to add it to your Unity project.

Back inside Unity open the package manager from the menu Windows -> Package Manager
In the top left corner press the + button and from the dropdown that appears select Install package from disk

Navigate to where you downloaded and unzipped the samples and select the package.json file inside that folder

Unity will now install the samples project after a little while. Once it is done you can now browse and install the samples directly from the package manager.