Want to create your first UI(User Interface) Allows a user to interact with your application. Unity currently supports three UI systems. More info
See in Glossary with UI Toolkit? Use this basic UI Toolkit workflow example to get started.
Note: For demonstration purposes, this guide describes how to add UI controls for the Editor UI. However, the instructions on adding UI controls to a UI Document also apply to runtime UI. For more information, refer to Get started with runtime UI.
If you perform a specific task often, you can use UI Toolkit to create a dedicated UI for it. For example, you can create a custom Editor window. The example demonstrates how to create a custom Editor window and add UI controls into your custom Editor window with UI Builder, UXML, and C# script.
You can find the completed files that this example creates in this GitHub repository.
Create a custom Editor window with two labels.
Assets
folder, and then select Create > UI Toolkit > Editor Window.SimpleCustomEditor
in the C# box.You can find the source files for it in the Assets/Editor
folder.
You can add UI controls to your window in the following ways:
You can use any of these methods individually, or combine. The following examples create three sets of labels, buttons, and toggles with a combination of these methods.
To visually add UI controls to your window, use UI Builder. The following steps add a button and a toggle into your custom Editor window in addition to the default label.
Editor
folder, double-click SimpleCustomEditor.uxml
to open the UI Builder.These controls were created in UI Builder
in the Text field.This is button1
in the Text field.button1
in the Name field.Number?
in the Label field.toggle1
in the Name field.SimpleCustomEditor.cs
and make sure the Visual Tree Asset is set to SimpleCustomEditor (Visual Tree Asset)
in the Inspector window.If you prefer to define your UI in a text file, you can edit the UXML to add the UI controls. The following steps add another set of label, button, and toggle into your window.
Editor
folder, select Assets > Create > UI Toolkit > UI Document to create a UXML file called SimpleCustomEditor_UXML.uxml
.SimpleCustomEditor_UXML.uxml
in the Project window.inlineStyle
to open SimpleCustomEditor_UXML.uxml
in a text editor.SimpleCustomEditor_uxml.uxml
with the following: <ui:UXML xmlns:ui="UnityEngine.UIElements" xmlns:uie="UnityEditor.UIElements" xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" engine="UnityEngine.UIElements" editor="UnityEditor.UIElements" noNamespaceSchemaLocation="../../UIElementsSchema/UIElements.xsd" editor-extension-mode="False">
<ui:Label text="These controls were created with UXML." />
<ui:Button text="This is button2" name="button2"/>
<ui:Toggle label="Number?" name="toggle2"/>
</ui:UXML>
Open SimpleCustomEditor.cs
.
Import the UXML file you created manually by adding the following to the CreateGUI
method:
// Import UXML created manually.
var visualTree = AssetDatabase.LoadAssetAtPath<VisualTreeAsset>("Assets/Editor/SimpleCustomEditor_uxml.uxml");
VisualElement labelFromUXML = visualTree.Instantiate();
root.Add(labelFromUXML);
Save your changes.
Select Window > UI Toolkit > SimpleCustomEditor. This opens your custom Editor window with three labels, two buttons, and two toggles.
If you prefer coding, you can add UI Controls to your window with a C# script. The following steps add another set of label, button, and toggle into your window.
Open SimpleCustomEditor.cs
.
Unity uses UnityEngine.UIElements
for basic UI controls like label, button, and toggle. To work with UI controls, you must add the following declaration if it’s not already present.
using UnityEngine.UIElements;
Change the text of the existing label from "Hello World! From C#"
to "These controls were created using C# code."
.
The EditorWindow class has a property called rootVisualElement
. To add the UI controls to your window, first instantiate the element class with some attributes, and then use the Add
methods of the rootVisualElement
.
Your finished CreateGUI()
method looks like the following:
public void CreateGUI()
{
// Each editor window contains a root VisualElement object
VisualElement root = rootVisualElement;
// VisualElements objects can contain other VisualElements following a tree hierarchy.
Label label = new Label("These controls were created using C# code.");
root.Add(label);
Button button = new Button();
button.name = "button3";
button.text = "This is button3.";
root.Add(button);
Toggle toggle = new Toggle();
toggle.name = "toggle3";
toggle.label = "Number?";
root.Add(toggle);
// Instantiate UXML created automatically which is set as the default VisualTreeAsset.
root.Add(m_VisualTreeAsset.Instantiate());
// Import UXML created manually.
var visualTree = AssetDatabase.LoadAssetAtPath<VisualTreeAsset>("Assets/Editor/SimpleCustomEditor_uxml.uxml");
VisualElement labelFromUXML = visualTree.Instantiate();
root.Add(labelFromUXML);
}
Select Window > UI Toolkit > SimpleCustomEditor to open your custom Editor window to see three labels, three buttons, and three toggles.
You can set up event handlers for your UI controls so that when you click the button, and select or clear the toggle, your UI controls perform some tasks.
In this example, set up event handlers that:
Your finished SimpleCustomEditor.cs
looks like the following:
using UnityEditor;
using UnityEngine;
using UnityEngine.UIElements;
public class SimpleCustomEditor : EditorWindow
{
[SerializeField]
private VisualTreeAsset m_VisualTreeAsset = default;
[MenuItem("Window/UI Toolkit/SimpleCustomEditor")]
public static void ShowExample()
{
SimpleCustomEditor wnd = GetWindow<SimpleCustomEditor>();
wnd.titleContent = new GUIContent("SimpleCustomEditor");
}
private int m_ClickCount = 0;
private const string m_ButtonPrefix = "button";
public void CreateGUI()
{
// Each editor window contains a root VisualElement object
VisualElement root = rootVisualElement;
// VisualElements objects can contain other VisualElement following a tree hierarchy.
Label label = new Label("These controls were created using C# code.");
root.Add(label);
Button button = new Button();
button.name = "button3";
button.text = "This is button3.";
root.Add(button);
Toggle toggle = new Toggle();
toggle.name = "toggle3";
toggle.label = "Number?";
root.Add(toggle);
// Instantiate UXML created automatically which is set as the default VisualTreeAsset.
root.Add(m_VisualTreeAsset.Instantiate());
// Import UXML created manually.
var visualTree = AssetDatabase.LoadAssetAtPath<VisualTreeAsset>("Assets/Editor/SimpleCustomEditor_uxml.uxml");
VisualElement labelFromUXML = visualTree.Instantiate();
root.Add(labelFromUXML);
//Call the event handler
SetupButtonHandler();
}
//Functions as the event handlers for your button click and number counts
private void SetupButtonHandler()
{
VisualElement root = rootVisualElement;
var buttons = root.Query<Button>();
buttons.ForEach(RegisterHandler);
}
private void RegisterHandler(Button button)
{
button.RegisterCallback<ClickEvent>(PrintClickMessage);
}
private void PrintClickMessage(ClickEvent evt)
{
VisualElement root = rootVisualElement;
++m_ClickCount;
//Because of the names we gave the buttons and toggles, we can use the
//button name to find the toggle name.
Button button = evt.currentTarget as Button;
string buttonNumber = button.name.Substring(m_ButtonPrefix.Length);
string toggleName = "toggle" + buttonNumber;
Toggle toggle = root.Q<Toggle>(toggleName);
Debug.Log("Button was clicked!" +
(toggle.value ? " Count: " + m_ClickCount : ""));
}
}
Did you find this page useful? Please give it a rating:
Thanks for rating this page!
What kind of problem would you like to report?
Thanks for letting us know! This page has been marked for review based on your feedback.
If you have time, you can provide more information to help us fix the problem faster.
Provide more information
You've told us this page needs code samples. If you'd like to help us further, you could provide a code sample, or tell us about what kind of code sample you'd like to see:
You've told us there are code samples on this page which don't work. If you know how to fix it, or have something better we could use instead, please let us know:
You've told us there is information missing from this page. Please tell us more about what's missing:
You've told us there is incorrect information on this page. If you know what we should change to make it correct, please tell us:
You've told us this page has unclear or confusing information. Please tell us more about what you found unclear or confusing, or let us know how we could make it clearer:
You've told us there is a spelling or grammar error on this page. Please tell us what's wrong:
You've told us this page has a problem. Please tell us more about what's wrong:
Thank you for helping to make the Unity documentation better!
Your feedback has been submitted as a ticket for our documentation team to review.
We are not able to reply to every ticket submitted.