Any way to stop UMG editor expanding Hierarchy collapsed for editing?

Development Programming & Scripting
1

When making more complex menus it helps to be able to ‘collapse’ branches in the hierarchy that are not being edited.

121288-menu_opens.png

In this quick example, on the Left side I have collapsed the branch starting with the Border so I can see the rest more easily.

But the moment I compile the widget, it expands back out to show every component.

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In an example this small it is no matter, but when you are closing a dozen or more branches it is quite a hassle to have to go back and find and close them all each time you hit compile or save.

Is there no option to stop it re-opening these branches until you do so manually?

5 Likes
2

If I am reading this correct it looks like its a bug that they have fixed in 4.15.

3

But still, if you switch between Designer view and Graph, all widgets will be expanded again, which is also bad. UE 4.20.3

4

Still obnoxious in 2022.

2 Likes
5

if you click into the viewport so that nothing is selected i think that prevents it from happening. seems to eb the case for me.

6

It is not a bug, someone intentionally coded this as a feature/default with wrong assumptions that people prefer this as a default rather than leaving things as-is.

I see every developer spending extra seconds, every time this “feature” enables itself.
This should be fixed - still a thing in Unreal 5.1.1.

I always have to duplicate objects, and thousand of chidden in the hierarchy are studently shown. Then I have to scroll all the way up, to close auto-expanded hierarchies. I probably lost hours of development time in total, due to this thing.

I think someone smart could find a code part that does this in the engine, then we could recompile it to get rid of this “feature”.

1 Like
7

Does anyone have a solution for this annoying problem? I’m going crazy, man!

8

No, UMG editer always expands hierarchy when editting

9

Not Possible yet, UMG auto-expands on edit by design

10

Still annoying in middle of 2026. The original post was 9 YEARS AGO. I have no idea how this has not been fixed.

For those who come across this, SHIFT+LEFT MOUSE collapses the stack below the item you click on. Then LEFT MOUSE to slowly expand the stack (don’t SHIFT+LEFT MOUSE again, as that will expand the stack). It doesn’t solve the problem, but helps a bit.

But even being able to collapse the stack, it’s still SUPER annoying:

  1. Add a cube, the tree explodes.
  2. SHIFT+LEFT MOUSE to collapse the stack open
  3. LEFT MOUSE to drill down to my cube
  4. Move the cube to a new parent node, the tree explodes open
  5. SHIFT+LEFT MOUSE to collapse the stack
  6. LEFT MOUSE to drill down to my cube
  7. Move the cube’s parent node to a new area, the tree explodes open

Etc, etc

It’s a nightmare to work with. How Epic hasn’t fixed this, I have no idea.