State of the Enhanced Contextual Menu in Unity 6

Unity Engine
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As many of you know, we have a strong desire to enhance the contextual menu in Unity. Currently, the contextual menu and some other parts of the menuing system across Unity are using OS menus. These have a stark contrast to the rest of the Editor and do not provide the extensibility we would like to offer you (such as icons, searching, and custom elements).

We made an attempt that covered most of the final design we wanted for the menus. However, it was based on a very old and brittle backend, which became apparent as we progressed. While some of you may not have noticed, it caused numerous regressions and bugs, particularly on Linux and Mac. Fixing these issues would have only compounded the problems in the backend. As a result, we made the difficult decision to revert the feature for the sake of stability.

Since then, priorities shifted, and the feature took a backseat. However, one of our teams has recently investigated what it would take to revisit the backend and bring it up to our quality standards. We remain committed to bringing this feature back. Weā€™re waiting for the backend work to be completed before reintroducing the front-end improvements.

We greatly appreciate the support and valuable feedback you provided while this feature was available. In the meantime, we encourage you to explore the contextual menus present in the Scene View as of Unity 6; while they are using the OS menus, they can give insight into the desired direction for contextual workflows. Please continue to provide feedback on your needs for these, and contextual menus overall, as we continue our efforts to generally clean up menus throughout Unity.

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Context menu search with new UI in Unity 2023 still not included in Unity 6 Preview
Unity 6.1 Beta is now available
Upcoming Feature Highlight: Main Toolbar Customization
Can we get the new (now disappeared) context menu...?
Can we get the new (now disappeared) context menu...?
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Iā€™m glad it is being looked into and will be making a return hopefully shortlyā€¦ meanwhile I hope all menuā€™s will be improved and especially adding something like detached menu support which has been in Maya for like decades as it is invaluable for faster workflow, especially when asset devs put there menuā€™s where ever they feel best often within other menuā€™s ā€¦

As the end user Iā€™d like easier access to use those often sub sub menuā€™s quicker by just drawing them out and having them easily accessible.

Would also say Unityā€™s menus could do with icon support tbhā€¦
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To be honest, I didnā€™t quite like the color palette of the context menu in 2023.2 (it felt like High Contrast rather than Dark) but the search feature and the extensibility are useful:

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I think it darkness level was fine and I rather white text on a darker background than a lighter grey background anyday. The header seperating lines could be less white though, would make it less contrastyā€¦

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Great newsā€¦ the search menu is a need for me and already became muscle memoryā€¦

I donā€™t really care about the color and maybe unity can just give us option to change it like editor themeā€¦ Itā€™s the search bar i longed for since its broken starting from unity 6 .18f using neon-age pluginā€¦

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Thankyou for your feedback. Weā€™ll add the detachable aspect to our list of requirements to evaluate. Icons were part of the original plan and will return when the rest does.

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We do have a way of searching menus which is not widely known, using Search. You can map the command Help/Search/Menu to a shortcut (Alt+Shif+F for example) , this will pull up a search window ready to search menus all you have to do then is type to find the menu entry, press Enter and done.

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I did tried it before, its the search icon on top right, right?
Itā€™s kinda more hassle to use quickly for me since its not a context based menu but rather just search everything based on filterā€¦ I end up not using it that much unless iā€™m looking for scripts or other assets (not menu)
Its good feature but just not for this specific use caseā€¦

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Would definitely welcome this back. Itā€™s one reason why Iā€™m still on 2023.2.20.

100% we need this to be customisable as well. I ended up making my own ā€˜Create Asset Windowā€™ editor window that I can customise the layout of all the entries, and itā€™s sped things up for me a hundred times over.

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I am staying on 2023.2.x too since I also can scroll lists with mouse wheel which are super useful in my case, and also the search. The main issue for me was that it doesnā€™t work consistent, like sometimes I donā€™t see some options but there is a way to fix it if you search and clean.

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I canā€™t live without this feature on unity6. i`m develop games on playmaker , and this search window accelerated my development. I donā€™t know why it was removed, I felt fine in 2023.2ā€¦

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I cant believe were stuck in the dark ages with these damn old school context menus in the name of STABILITY" Desperate for Searchable Enum Drawer Integration in Playmaker

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How is it possible that implementing such a fundamental and core feature is taking so long?

This has become a major time sink and is noticeably hindering our workflow efficiency, particularly when performing repetitive tasks within the project window.

Could you kindly provide an update on this? Your response would be greatly appreciated as it impacts our productivity considerably. Thank you!

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Any chance we can get this added as an optional beta package? Until it can be officially added for everyone.

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Windowing code is tricky, all 3 desktop platforms have their quirks that need to be accounted for. Overall there are many many things we would like to improve or fix, and they all compete for the same devs. At this stage we are very much focused on guaranteeing stability in Unity 6. I will most definitely update this thread when we can commit to a version where this lands.

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Once we get to that point we will consider the feasibility of this.

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Thank you Neil for your reply and explaining this.

You mention ā€œall 3 desktop platforms have their quirksā€, but this I donā€™t understand. The context menu is your UI made in UI toolkit correct? You have 100% control what you show there, where you show it, how it reacts to input, when it closes etc.

I mean its same as creating custom context menu in-game or in-editor with UI toolkit, which can be done in few days, as its just visual elements and texts being ordered correctly.

But maybe Iā€™m missing something :slight_smile:

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The only desktop platform most of us probably care about and use for Unity is Windows, can we not just have focus on getting that one done for this improvement first?

All the other quirks from linux and osx can be done at a later date for a later version. As currently this fixā€¦ New contextual menu is not easy to read - #52 by Neonage ā€¦gets more broken with every U6 update, currently on U6 30f1 you canā€™t see which menuā€™s actually expand out now. Iā€™m tempted to remove it, however filter search in a context menu is probably more useful than digging through submenus anyway.

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i hope it will come really soon, It just that many problems that I had with the engine just magically solved with this one feature and Iā€™m really amazed by 2023 more than unity 6 tbh

but since unity 2023 abandoned and doesnā€™t have LTS, Iā€™m donā€™t want to risk to start my project thereā€¦ currently sticking to unity .17f1 since that the version where neonage plugin still works perfectly

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Unity 2023 became Unity 6. They didnā€™t abandon it, it just got a rename.

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