Why does pressing tab navigate through a UIToolkit menu?

Unity Engine
, , , , ,
1

Hello, I am trying to use UIToolkit to build a dynamic menu and I am trying to understand why pressing tab navigates in the menu. As I understood it, with Input System, the input events come from the default UI action map and I can’t find tab being used in there so why is tab doing stuff. So, where is the tab input coming from?

2

Hello! Tab triggers the NavigationMove event, in the direction of Next. You could try listening for that and stopping propagation to prevent any action.

3

Hi Laila,
alright thank you. Small follow up, is there a way to synthesize a Next NavigationMove event so that I could get the same behaviour but with something like down arrow?

4

That is covered in the docs: Unity - Manual: Synthesize and send events

5

Is it? Could you describe it more detailed?

6

What part of the docs don’t you understand? I’d just be repeating what the manual shows.

7

The down arrow also triggers a NavigationMove event, in the Down direction, you could listen for that, and change selection, not sure which dropdown menu you’re using, but assuming you have access to changing selection.

8

Thanks for the answers! I still don’t understand how to synthesize a NavigationMove event with direction Next. I’ve tried running the Synthesize method with KeyCode.Tab but my menu does not receive it. What is so special about tab?
Can I change tab to be arrow up and down instead?
Do I have to make all of the navigation by myself as you suggest Laila?

Oh, managed now with the following

using(NavigationMoveEvent navEvent = NavigationMoveEvent.GetPooled(NavigationMoveEvent.Direction.Next))
{
	doc.rootVisualElement.SendEvent(navEvent);
}