To use Unity, you need an activated license. For Unity Plus and Pro licenses, you need to get a serial number; for a Unity Personal license, you don’t need a serial number.
You can manage your licenses by using the Unity Hub.
This page covers how to activate a license and return a license by using the command line.
If you don’t know your Unity license information, speak to the Owner of your license. Owners can assign a seat to you via the Organization, or you can contact Unity Customer Service.
Before activating your Unity license on the command line, make sure that the license file folder exists and you have write permission.
Note: The command line procedure only works for Plus and Pro licenses because Personal licenses do not have serial numbers associated with them. Use the Unity Hub to activate Personal licenses. If you have another OS, you can manage your license through the Hub.
On macOS, enter the following into the Terminal to launch Unity and activate your license:
<editor-installation-location> -quit -batchmode -serial SB-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX -username 'name@example.com' -password 'XXXXXXXXXXXXX'
Replace <editor-installation-location> with the actual path to your Editor installer. Typically, this is usually something like /Applications/Unity/Unity.app/Contents/MacOS/Unity on macOS.
Tip: If you use continuous integration (CI) tools like Jenkins to activate via the command line, add the -nographics flag to prevent a WindowServer error.
On Windows, enter the following into the Command Prompt to launch Unity and activate your license:
"<editor-installation-location>" -batchmode -username name@example.com -password XXXXXXXXXXXXX -serial E3-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX –quit
Replace <editor-installation-location> with the actual path to your Editor installer. Typically, this is usually something like C:\Program Files\Unity\Editor\Unity.exe on Windows.
Wait a few seconds after running this command to give Unity enough time to communicate with the license server. If activation fails, you can open the Editor.log for information. For any activation errors, check Activation issues to find a solution for your issue.
On macOS, type the following into the Terminal to return the license (replacing <editor-installation-location> with the actual installation location, such as /Applications/Unity/Unity.app/Contents/MacOS/Unity):
<editor-installation-location> -quit -batchmode -returnlicense -username 'name@example.com' -password 'XXXXXXXXXXXXX'
On Windows, type the following into the Command Prompt to return the license (replacing <editor-installation-location> with the actual installation location, such as C:\Program Files\Unity\Editor\Unity.exe):
"<editor-installation-location>" -quit -batchmode -returnlicense -username name@example.com -password XXXXXXXXXXXXX