UI Toolkit: Focus & Navigation

Unity's UI Toolkit ships without an equivalent to UGUI's Navigation component. Out of the box, gamepad and keyboard focus management is effectively broken — arrow keys don't move between buttons, focus rings don't hide for mouse users, and nested menus need custom plumbing for every edge case.

This asset fills that gap. Drop the included FocusManager prefab into your scene, register your focusable elements, and directional navigation works immediately.

Works on day one.

Spatial algorithm handles irregular layouts — mixed cell sizes, wide rows, gaps, sparse grids — no per-edge wiring. Push and pop focus groups for nested menus and modal dialogs. Focus memory restores the user to where they left off when they return to a previous group. Auto scroll-into-view keeps the focused element visible inside long ScrollViews.

Device-aware focus indicator.

The focus ring renders for keyboard and gamepad users but hides for mouse users automatically. Three visibility modes (Auto, AlwaysShow, AlwaysHide) let you override for accessibility or kiosk scenarios. The indicator itself is pluggable — supply your own IFocusIndicator implementation for animated rings, glow effects, or anything you like.

Six demo scenes included.

Basic Nav (3×3 grid starter), Grid Nav (irregular layout with wide cells), Nested Groups (push/pop with focus memory), Modal Trap (confirm dialog pattern), ScrollView (auto-scroll-into-view through a long list), and Device Switching (three indicator visibility modes shown in real time). Each demo ships with UXML, USS, controller script, and a README explaining what it shows.

Works with Screen Manager.

When UI Toolkit: Screen Manager is also installed, open Tools > KrookedLilly > Setup and enable the Screen Manager → Focus & Navigation integration. Each screen then owns a focus group automatically. Push or pop a screen and focus follows — Tab cycles within the active screen only, and returning to a previous screen restores focus to whichever element the user had selected. Per-screen default focus and boundary mode are one-line opt-ins:

ScreenFocusBridge.SetDefaultFocus(screenId, element);
ScreenFocusBridge.SetBoundaryMode(screenId, BoundaryMode.Trap);

Works with Tween Engine.

When UI Toolkit: Tween Engine is also installed, open Tools > KrookedLilly > Setup and enable the Tween Engine → Focus & Navigation integration. Then swap the default class-toggle indicator for TweenFocusIndicator — focused elements scale up smoothly with configurable target scale, duration, and easing. The USS class still applies, so existing border or color styling continues to work alongside the tween:

focusManager.IndicatorManager.Indicator = new TweenFocusIndicator();

Other UI Toolkit assets that consume Focus & Navigation (Modal & Notifications, Theme Switcher, Form Validation, Data Binding) toggle their integration from the unified Tools > KrookedLilly > Setup window. Integrations ship disabled by default — your project never picks up code from siblings you do not enable.

Full C# source, no DLLs.

XML documentation on every public API. Works with both Unity's Legacy Input Manager and the new Input System package (auto-detected at runtime). Zero hard dependencies.