Is there a difference between UE5 and Early Access UE5?

Development Getting Started & Setup
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I was in Early Access UE5. I want to make sure I have the latest version of UE5 after today’s launch. My Launcher UI says, “Launch UE5 Early Access”. Do I have latest?

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Mine just shows 5.0.0, nothing about Early Access. I did uninstall and re-select 5.0.0 though so you might need to do that.

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I’ve got the same question as the OP. The Launcher’s button text is confusing as it still refers to early access, but the version on the installed engine is 5.0.0 (this was the last EA version that I’d pulled down some weeks ago).

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You do not. “UE5 Early Access” was the name for 5.0.0 Early Access 1 and 5.0.0 Early Access 2 in the launcher; if you look on disk where your copy of the engine is installed, you’ll find it probably is in a directory called 5.0EA or 5.0_EA – I don’t remember which at this point.

5.0.0 Preview 1 and Preview 2 were evidently considered the “actual” engine; when the release build came out today, it marked the release as an update to my Preview 2 installation. (And Preview 2 was installed to a directory labeled only 5.0, as the release is.)

Try hittting the “+” button to add a new engine version, and you may see 5.0.0 in there; I no longer see the early access build, but until it vanished, “5.0.0” and “UE5 Early Access” were available as two separate builds you could install.

If you don’t see a 5.0.0 in the list of available engines to install… then yeah, what Vigilant suggests might be the way to go: uninstall the Early Access one and just install fresh.

So far as I recall, the early access builds (and the preview builds) have always reported themselves as 5.0.0 at their launch splash screens and such. So I wouldn’t use that as your yardstick as to which one you have installed.

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Aha! I was getting lost in the launcher UX. I had to find the engine versions under the library tab once I was on the Unreal Engine section. My expectation was that the Launch button on the top right would allow me to update versions.

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The UX on that particular aspect of the engine ecosystem could probably stand to be a little more intuitive, yeah; I think those of us who’ve been using the engine long enough are just used to the launcher’s occasional… let’s go with “quirks”, and tend to take them for granted.

Glad you got it sorted, though!

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Mine eventually updated to 5.0