Introducing native plug-ins for Android

You can use native plug-insA platform-specific native code library that is created outside of Unity for use in Unity. Allows you can access features like OS calls and third-party code libraries that would otherwise not be available to Unity. More info
See in Glossary in Android applications. There are different types of native plug-inA set of code created outside of Unity that creates functionality in Unity. There are two kinds of plug-ins you can use in Unity: Managed plug-ins (managed .NET assemblies created with tools like Visual Studio) and Native plug-ins (platform-specific native code libraries). More info
See in Glossary, and the project’s scripting backendA framework that powers scripting in Unity. Unity supports three different scripting backends depending on target platform: Mono, .NET and IL2CPP. Universal Windows Platform, however, supports only two: .NET and IL2CPP. More info
See in Glossary determines which plug-in types Unity supports. The possible plug-in types are:

• Shared library: Plug-ins packaged in a shared library (.so).
• Static library: Plug-ins packaged in a static library (.a).
• C/C++ source files: C/C++ source files that Unity compiles along with IL2CPPA Unity-developed scripting back-end which you can use as an alternative to Mono when building projects for some platforms. More info
  See in Glossary generated files. This includes all C/C++ source files with extensions .c, .cc, .cpp and .h.

Scripting backend compatibility

The following table shows which scripting backends support the different types of native plug-ins.

Notes:

• IL2CPP scripting backend doesn’t support direct use of .NET dynamic linked libraries (.dll) at runtime. These libraries must be converted to C++ code during the build process.
• Integration with other .NET runtime platforms, such as Xamarin isn’t supported.

Additional resources

• Create a native plug-in for Android