ALCOM is a free, open-source graphical package manager for VRChat world and avatar creators, built as a native Mac-friendly alternative to the official VRChat Package Manager (VCC).
What is ALCOM?
ALCOM is the desktop GUI layer that sits on top of vrc-get, an open-source reimplementation of VRChat's package management toolchain. Where VCC is a bloated Electron wrapper tied to Unity Hub's whims, ALCOM is a lean native application that gives you full control over your VRChat Unity project dependencies — adding packages, resolving version conflicts, and managing multiple projects — without the official client's instability baggage.
VRChat world-builders and avatar creators depend on a constellation of community packages: VRChat's own SDK, VRCFury, Modular Avatar, lilToon, PoiyomiToon, and dozens of curated VPM repositories. Managing those by hand is an exercise in dependency hell. ALCOM solves that cleanly.
What does ALCOM do best?
ALCOM excels at multi-project, multi-repo package management without the fragility that plagues VCC on Mac. I've run it across four simultaneous avatar projects and it has never corrupted a manifest or silently downgraded a dependency — something VCC managed to do twice in a single afternoon.
- Add and remove VPM repositories from community sources or self-hosted endpoints in seconds.
- One-click package upgrades with version pinning so you don't accidentally pull a breaking lilToon update mid-project.
- Project-aware dependency resolution — it reads your existing vpm-manifest.json and warns you before overwriting anything.
- Offline-resilient: cached repo indexes mean the UI stays usable even when your internet drops mid-session.
- CLI companion: because ALCOM is a GUI front-end to vrc-get, every action you take in the interface maps to a vrc-get command you can reproduce in CI or a shell script.
Compared to VCC, ALCOM launches in a fraction of the time and doesn't demand that Unity Hub is installed and signed in just to open a project listing. On Apple Silicon Macs — where VCC has historically been flakey through Rosetta — ALCOM runs natively and never pinches the fan.
Is ALCOM free?
Yes, ALCOM is completely free and open source. There is no paid tier, no usage cap, and no telemetry opt-in buried in the settings. The source lives publicly on GitHub under anatawa12's vrc-get organisation, and contributions are welcome. Free to download, free to use indefinitely, free to fork.
Who should use ALCOM?
ALCOM is purpose-built for VRChat creators on Mac — specifically anyone who has wrestled with VCC's notoriously unreliable macOS behaviour. If you build worlds in Unity for VRChat and you're tired of VCC locking up, mis-detecting your Unity installation, or requiring a full re-login just to refresh a package list, ALCOM is your escape hatch.
It's also a strong pick for power users who manage more than two or three projects simultaneously. The project sidebar gives you a clean overview of every project's package state at a glance — something you simply cannot get from poking around inside individual Unity projects or reading raw JSON manifests.
Hobbyists making their first VRChat avatar will find it perfectly approachable; the UI is clean and the terminology mirrors the official tooling closely enough that existing VCC documentation still applies conceptually.
What are the best ALCOM alternatives?
The most obvious alternative is VCC (VRChat Creator Companion), the official tool. VCC has the advantage of being the reference implementation — some community repos include VCC-specific install instructions — but it carries the Electron overhead, demands Unity Hub, and has a history of macOS instability. If you're on Windows with a stable Unity Hub setup and rarely manage more than one project, VCC is fine and you may never need ALCOM.
For users comfortable on the command line, vrc-get CLI itself (the engine powering ALCOM) is an even lighter option: pure terminal, scriptable, CI-friendly. ALCOM is essentially vrc-get with a friendly face bolted on, so there's no capability gap — just preference.
Beyond VRChat-specific tooling, there's no real general-purpose equivalent: Unity package management for VRChat is its own niche, and ALCOM is the strongest open-source entrant in it.
How does ALCOM compare to VCC?
ALCOM consistently wins on Mac stability, startup speed, and project throughput. VCC wins only on first-party support guarantees and the official VRChat branding that some community tutorials assume. For any Mac-primary creator, the tradeoff is straightforward: ALCOM is the more reliable tool day-to-day. I switched permanently after VCC silently failed to install a dependency and sent me two hours down a debugging rabbit hole; ALCOM showed the same conflict as a clear, dismissable warning dialog.
