UE5 UMG: main menus, HUDs, and the anchor trap
By the Cosindra team · Updated August 7, 2026
UMG is Unreal’s UI system, and the first menu anyone builds usually works perfectly on the machine it was built on and nowhere else. The reason is anchors, and it is worth understanding before you place a single button.
This guide covers how a widget gets on screen, why input stops working the moment a menu appears, and what anchors actually do — plus the calls that scaffold a menu, a HUD, a dialogue box or an inventory grid.
A widget needs two things to be visible
Creating a Widget Blueprint gives you an asset, not a UI. Something has to construct it at runtime and add it to the viewport — usually the player controller, on BeginPlay for a menu or when gameplay starts for a HUD.
This trips people because the editor preview looks exactly like the finished thing. The designer view is a preview of the asset, not evidence that anything will ever display it.
Anchors: the reason your menu breaks at 1440p
An anchor tells a widget what it is positioned relative to. The default anchors everything to the top-left corner, so a button placed 900 pixels from the left edge stays 900 pixels from the left edge — which is the middle of a 1920 screen and nowhere near the middle of a 2560 one.
Anchor a centred menu to the centre and its offsets are measured from there instead. Anchor a health bar to the bottom-left and it stays in the corner at any resolution. Stretch anchors — dragging the anchor handles apart — make a widget scale with the region instead of holding a fixed size, which is what a full-width bar wants.
The rule of thumb: anchor to the screen edge or corner the element visually belongs to. Test at two very different resolutions before building the rest of the UI on top, because fixing anchors late means re-placing everything.
Why the buttons stopped responding
Showing a menu does not hand input to it. Until the input mode changes, the game still owns the mouse — the cursor is hidden, clicks go to gameplay, and the perfectly correct button does nothing.
A full-screen menu wants UI-only input with the cursor shown. A HUD overlaying live gameplay wants game-and-UI, so the player can still look around while an interactive element is on screen. Setting this back when the menu closes matters just as much; forgetting it leaves the player unable to move.
The editor calls that build it
The element-level tools give you a widget built piece by piece. The setup tools generate a whole working screen in one call, which is usually the faster starting point — generate, then edit.
| # | Tool | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | create_widget_blueprint | Creates the Widget Blueprint asset |
| 2 | add_widget_element | Adds an element to the widget’s Canvas Panel |
| 3 | set_widget_text | Sets the text on a TextBlock |
| 4 | bind_ui_button_action | Wires a game action to a button click |
| — | setup_game_menu | Generates a complete menu with its logic |
| — | setup_game_hud | Generates a HUD — health, crosshair, ammo |
| — | setup_dialogue_ui | Generates a dialogue box with portrait and name areas |
| — | setup_inventory_ui | Generates a grid-based inventory |
Put an AI copilot inside your editor
The free Cosindra desktop app connects to your UE 5.7/5.8 project — the assistant works in your open editor, and what you generate with the web tools applies straight into it. Windows & macOS.
Download CosindraFrequently asked questions
Why is my UMG widget not showing up in UE5?
Creating the Widget Blueprint is not enough — something has to construct it at runtime and add it to the viewport, normally the player controller. The editor’s designer view previews the asset whether or not anything displays it, which is why it looks finished while the game shows nothing. If it is being added and still not visible, check Z-order against other widgets and that its visibility is not set to Hidden or Collapsed.
What do anchors do in UMG, and why does my UI move at other resolutions?
An anchor is the point a widget measures its position from. The default is the top-left corner, so every offset is a fixed pixel distance from that corner — which lands somewhere completely different on a wider screen. Anchor each element to the edge or corner it visually belongs to, and use stretch anchors for anything that should scale with the screen rather than hold a fixed size. Test at two very different resolutions before building on top of the layout.
Why do my UI buttons not respond to clicks?
The input mode is almost certainly still game-only, so the cursor is hidden and clicks go to gameplay rather than the widget. A full-screen menu needs UI-only input with the mouse cursor shown; a HUD over live gameplay needs game-and-UI so the player can still look around. Remember to set it back when the menu closes — leaving it in UI-only is why the player sometimes cannot move after exiting a menu.