Create a Portable Unity Installation with WinRAR

For a puzzle class I’m auditing, my group is working on a branch of a puzzle hunt. For part of our last puzzle, we needed a standalone executable that wouldn’t need to be installed directly on the machine. Sure, we had a standard Unity build for Windows and we could have linked directly to the executable, but this particular program needed to be added manually on 12+ computers.

To shorten the setup time for the day the puzzle hunt ran, I searched for a way to make a portable version of the program that could just be dragged-and-dropped on the machines. I started with 7-Zip but found that what I wanted was already built into WinRAR, which is what we’re using in this tutorial. (And I’m using a Windows PC.)

So once you’ve got a working Unity build, let’s get to it!

Unity Build + WinRAR = Standalone Executable

1. Download WinRAR.

2. Select all the build files and right-click. Click “Add to archive…” in the context menu. (If you are adding a custom icon, you do not need to include it at this time.)
   

3. In the dialogue box under Archive name, write whatever name you prefer for the resulting file. Under compression method, choose “Best” and then check the “Create SFX archive” box.
   
   NOTE: checking the box may change the archive name to “YourGame.sfx.exe”. Don’t worry about it for now.

4. Go to the “Advanced” tab and click “SFX Options…”.
   

5. Under the “Setup” tab, type the name of the build exe under “Run after extraction”.
   

6. Under “Modes”, check “Unpack to temporary folder”. In the “Silent mode” section, check “Hide all”.
   

7. Go to “Update” and then under “Overwrite mode”, choose “Overwrite all files”
   

8. If you want a custom icon, go to the “Text and icon” tab. Browse for your chosen icon under “Load SFX icon from the file”.
   

9. Hit OK to close out the context menus. WinRAR should generate an application file.
   

10. Rename the file to “YourGame.exe” if it changed in step 3 and you’re done!
    

NOTE: Starting a game file created with this method will take a few seconds longer than a standard installation. I recommend this for testing and the like, and not for an executable you plan on selling.