Unreal Engine dialogue boxes inaccessible on multiple monitors

Hiya,

I’m running into an issue with UE4 on multiple monitors.

I like to keep my blueprint editor on my secondary display, and it works great, but for some reason, when I get some kind of engine dialogue box (Like “Change Variable Pin Type”, for instance), the dialogue box seems to appear somewhere outside of both of my screens. It causes the main editor and the blueprint editor windows to hang, clearly because it’s waiting for a response from me. I can’t seem to move it on-screen, and the only way I know the dialogue box is there at all is that I see it when I try to alt-tab to it.

When I unplug my second monitor, the dialogue box shows up in the center of my main monitor and I can respond to it and continue working.

But wow it’s annoying to have to unplug my screen just for something like that, a somewhat common occurrence when messing with blueprint systems.

I’m on UE 4.13.2 at the moment. The only other thing I can think to add is that my secondary monitor is configured to be centered on the right side (as in, it’s not flush with either the top or bottom of my first monitor, but it is on the right side) I guess that could have something to do with the positioning of the dialogue box. I keep both my editor windows maximized, typically.

Specs:

MSI GS60 6QE gaming laptop
(MSI GS60 Ghost Pro 4K-238 15.6")
Windows 10 Home 64-bit (10.0, Build 14393)
Intel Core i7-6700HQ CPU @ 2.6GHz (8 CPUs)
16384 MB RAM
DirectX 12
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M
Display 1: 3840x2160 (32 bit) (60Hz) Generic PnP Monitor
Display 2: 1920x1080 (32 bit) (59 Hz) Generic PnP Monitor

Hello MVG Dev01,

As your two monitors are at very different resolutions, are you using Windows 10’s UI scale feature at all? If so, this could be the cause of it. If so, let me know and I’ll try to test this myself.

A workaround for the moment other than unplugging your monitor would be to hover over the UE4 icon on the taskbar, wait for the preview windows to appear for each UE4 window. You can then right-click the preview for the dialogue box, select ‘Move’, hit any arrow key (this will anchor it to your mouse) and then move your mouse back on-screen to bring the window with it.

Hey Matthew,

I believe I’m currently at 250% scaling

I actually tried the preview-right-click-move method before I posted my question… I was dragging around quite a lot and didn’t see it appear. I figured that either it was so far offscreen that I never made it to the viewport (or missed the viewport) or that the dialogue box was somehow not rendering.

Currently working on an even smaller secondary monitor at a different location; I’ll report if it happens again, but haven’t changed any pin types for a while :wink:

Can confirm the ‘move’ workaround doesn’t seem to work for me. The cursor will jump to around the middle of the second monitor, display as the standard move crossed-arrow icon, but the dialogue box is not visible. If I drag it to the primary monitor and click, initiating a second Move places the cursor back on the second monitor again, as if I hadn’t moved it at all.

I can also confirm the dialogue box doesn’t seem to be behind the editor windows… I tested with windows that weren’t maximized.

Once I unplug my monitor, it hops to the middle of the remaining display, in front of all other windows and can be interacted with.

After testing this on a couple monitors and messing around with the UI Scaling, I haven’t been able to reproduce the issue you’re seeing but I have noticed that Windows has stopped recommending that UI scaling be used for situations like this. Can you try disabling the UI scaling temporarily to see if it is causing the issue? I did notice that with the 1920x1080 monitor set as the primary, the Epic Games Launcher wouldn’t successfully launch while the UI Scaling was set to 250%, saying that the resolution was too low, which could be related.

We haven’t heard from you in a while, MVG Dev01. Are you still experiencing this issue? If so, have you tried disabling UI scaling to see if that is the issue? In the meantime, I’ll be marking this issue as resolved for tracking purposes.

Hey!

Thanks for the response; I’ll test it out and get back to you when I get a chance to.

I had this issue and I disabled all other monitors except one then disabled scaling (set to 100%). After logging out and back in I was able to see the window off to the side. I docked it to the main window, reset my displays, and normal behavior has been restored.