🖱️Nice Navigation System

It's for gamepad (controller) and keyboard navigation in your UI. So without mouse. Currently it's used for the pause menu and settings menu but you can use it for your UI too.

If you want to see how the Nice Navigation System is being used you can also skip what is below (theory) and see a practical implementation in Use Settings Menu in Main Menu

Make sure you are using the right input mode to make the Nice Navigation System working. It needs to be set to Get Player Controller -> Set Input Mode Game And UI.

(Game only would work too if you not plan to have mouse inputs)

Enable/Disable Nice Navigation System

By default the Nice Navigation System is disabled. If you use the pause menu template it will be enabled when entering the pause menu and disabled when leaving the pause menu. But if don't use the pause menu that comes with this product you need to make sure to enable the Nice Navigation System when you need it and you also want to disable when entering a game input mode again where you probably want to prevent that it will navigate in the background.

Here is how you turn enable or disable the Nice Navigation System:

How does it work in general?

Ignore the following if you want to use only mous as your input mode. Then go directly to Navigation Input Modes

A widget that should be selectable by the Nice Navigation System has WB_Master_NavWidget as parent class. Usually if you create a new widget it is based on the parent class User Widget. WB_Master_NavWidget is also based on the parent class User Widget. So in short, if you create a new widget and set the parent class to WB_Master_NavWidget it is like a normal User Widget but additionally with some more features coming from WB_Master_NavWidget.

Settings widgets as for example WB_T1_Toggler has also WB_Master_NavWidget as a parent class (not directly but somewhere in there hierarchy).

If you select a widget that has WB_Master_NavWidget as parent you can see, if you select it in a widget, a Nice Navigation section as for example here:

Selected by default you usually keep tunrned off. The nice navigation system is selecting this widget if there is no widget selected at all (which you should try to prevent). So if you tun on the Nice Navigation System because you are for example entering the pause menu it selects a specific widget in the same step. This is how you select a Nav Widget (so a widget that has WB_Master_NavWidget as parent):

Instead of the 'Navigation Widget to select' variable you see here on the image, you need to take a reference variable to the specific widget that you want to select.

You usally do this step of selecting a new widget whenever you enter open for example a new UI page. Because once the navigation system know which Nav Widget is selected you can navigate from there on to other Nav Widgets by using the arrow keys on your keyboard or a gamepad/controller.

Taking a look again on the Navigation Section in the details tab:

Often you have widgets above each other or next to each other. So if you have many widgets in a vertical box (or vertical scroll box) you can tick Vertical Navigation in Parent Container. This is used in the 3 setting menu themes widgets where it is very helpful to have set Vertical Navigation in Parent Container to true. The system automatically recognizes the previous or next child of the parent container. If you have a Nav Widgets in a Horizontal Box you can set Horizontal Navigation to true instead. Do not set both to true. IMPORTANT NOTE: There are also four Force values that you can set for example if you want to navigate to a widget that is not in the same box. Since UE 5.3 there is a bug that randomly widgets that you set in these fields get cleared. To be on the safe side set the Force values only in blueprints. Here is an example: