Unity type or namespace name 'InputSystem' does not exist in the namespace 'UnityEngine'

Question

I have installed the new InputSystem package in my Unity project. I have set the input to "new inputsystem" in the Unity Player Settings. I have quit and restarted both Unity and VS Code.

But when I try to use the system in VS Code, I immediately get this error:

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;
using UnityEngine.InputSystem;              // <-error
using UnityEngine.InputSystem.Controls;     // <-error

The type or namespace name 'InputSystem' does not exist in the namespace 'UnityEngine' (are you missing an assembly reference?) [Assembly-CSharp]

What can I do to make VS Code recognise the Unity InputSystem package?

Answer 1

The issue is that the required .csproj files (VSCode needs them to understand the available libraries) for the new package were not auto-generated when you installed the new package (it didn't happen for me either, maybe it is intentionally manual).

Go to Edit -> Preferences... and then click on External Tools. You need to tick the box to Generate .csproj files for: Registry packages (and any other ones you might want) and then click on Regenerate project files.

That should generate whatever is needed for VSCode to recognize the new package - you shouldn't even need to restart it.