If you have an error flashing up in Unity Hub for a moment that says “Unity is already in list. you cannot locate the same version” and your editor fails to start, this fix may well work for you.
What causes this error?
When Unity generates a license, it takes several fingerprints of your machine, including the mac address of the active network device. The error “Unity is already in list. you cannot locate the same version” in Unity Hub is usually caused when there is a mismatch between the licensed mac address and the one used to generate the license. This problem for me started to happen after I removed ProtonVPN from my system, which removed some network devices.
Here is how to fix the “Unity is already in list. you cannot locate the same version” bug:
- Sign out of Unity Hub
- Delete your Unity_lic.ulf license file (%PROGRAMDATA%\Unity\)
- Control Panel > Network and Sharing Centre > Change adaptor settings
- Disable all network adaptors except the one you are using to connect to the internet
- Open command prompt and type: ipconfig /all
- Copy the “Physical Address” of your active network connection e.g. B0-7F-BD-53-8Y-DA
- Open Unity Hub and sign in, it will say you do not have a license, click on Manual Activation
- Save your license request file (Unity_lic.alf) to your desktop
- Open Unity_lic.alf in a text editor and scroll to where you see “<Binding Key=”5″ Value=”xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx” />
- Change the values of Binding Key 5 to the Physical Address you copied earlier and save the file
- Go to https://license.unity3d.com/manual and upload your edited Unity_lic.alf file to generate your license
- Save your license to your desktop
- Complete the manual activation on Unity Hub with this license file
Good luck 🙂