Updated Experience Controls Now Live

[workbloxing]

Hello Creators,

As mentioned last month, we’re excited to announce that updated experience controls are now widely available to all users, excluding console and VR devices. The experience controls have been designed to make it easier for your users to quickly access important features like voice chat, text chat, and soon, Party, which are expected to improve key metrics for your experience and for the platform.

We are also building these controls to scale for the future, allowing us to add new features like captures and music seamlessly within the new hamburger menu. The menu only displays features enabled in your experience, with Report Abuse consistently available for user safety.

What’s New?

Hamburger Menu: Easier access to in-experience controls

• Report Abuse: Opens reporting UI
• Self View: Toggles Self View UI On/Off
• Capture: Toggles screen capture UI On/Off
• Leaderboard: Toggles Leaderboard UI On/Off
• Emotes: Toggles Emotes UI On/Off
• Inventory: Toggles Inventory UI On/Off
• Respawn (Also Known As: Reset Character)

Persistent Icons within Experience Controls: Quick access for communication

• Text Chat: Toggles in-experience Chat UI (On/Off)
• Microphone: Toggles On/Off

Note: For this update, we’re keeping the current design of the Roblox/Tilt menu as is . However, we’re planning to enhance this design in future updates.

Driven By Your Input

Over the past year, we’ve carefully tested and gathered valuable insights from you through surveys, RDC sessions, and DevForum comments to fine tune the experience controls. We want to make sure your in experience UI meets your needs, and your input has been invaluable in guiding our decisions. For more details on changes we’ve made based on your feedback, see here.

For voice chat enabled experiences, the user’s mic icon moves to the upper left within experience controls. Speaker icons remain above other users to indicate when they are speaking.

If you’ve already made design changes using the APIs, they will automatically update with any shifts in Roblox reserve space to avoid occlusion. For some of you, we know that redesigning your UI can be inconvenient. To make it easier, we highly recommend using two APIs TopbarSafeInsets API and signal API which will allow for smoother adjustments to your in experience UI.

Please note that not making these changes may lead to instances where your UI overlaps with Roblox experience controls.

Looking Ahead

We intend to continue to optimize and improve controls on Roblox and in the future, we’re focused on these areas of interest:

• Console & VR - updated in experience controls will be added to support these devices
• Roblox (Escape) Menu - streamlining design for better accessibility and simplicity.

Our updated experience controls are expected to enhance user interaction and engagement within your experiences. We’re excited about the launch today and as always, we welcome your feedback and thank you for your continued support.

Let’s create amazing experiences together!

FAQs

How do I disable the in-experience controls?

• You cannot change the location or visibility of the experience controls. They will be on the left and sit next to the Roblox (Escape) menu. The goal is to create a consistent experience for leaderboard, inventory, voice, chat, reporting, etc. across all experiences.

If my experience doesn’t support a feature listed in the hamburger menu, will the feature still appear in this menu?

• No, for example, if your experience hasn’t enabled voice chat or if you’ve disabled leaderboard, inventory or emotes - these features will not appear in the hamburger menu to users in your experience.

  

  All Creator controlled features disabled in experience

What happened to the three dot menu in the top right of the screen?

• We removed the three dot menu from the top right of the screen entirely and replaced it with a hamburger menu next to the Roblox menu. You are welcome to fully customize the top right of the screen to meet the demands of your experience. We also recommend adopting our two APIs TopbarInset and ScreenInsets to always be aware of where Roblox UI is placed on-screen.

  While disabling leaderboard, inventory, and emotes used to hide the three dot menu, this will not be the case for the hamburger menu as Report Abuse will always be available via the hamburger menu and cannot be disabled.

How wide will the Roblox reserved space be?

• Experience controls will have various widths depending on the number of communication (voice chat, text chat) icons enabled and as a result, experience controls and the Roblox menu could occupy the entire width (portrait mobile) of the device screen. We recommend adopting our two APIs TopbarSafeInsets API and signal API to always be aware of where Roblox UI is placed on-screen.

Will I be able to customize any experience controls?

• A key goal for updating the experience controls is to maintain consistency and ease of access for frequently used controls. As a result, Roblox experience controls are left aligned and creators have the opportunity to utilize the right side of the screen. We recommend adopting our two APIs TopbarSafeInsets API and signal API to always be aware of where Roblox UI is placed on-screen.

Why are there duplicate ways (Roblox menu & hamburger menu) to Report Abuse now?

• We are looking at reconciling both entry points for Report Abuse when we start work on improving all of the functionality under the Roblox/Escape menu. If you have recommendations for changes you’d like to see on those screens, please feel free to share them here for us to consider.

How did Roblox determine the icon sizing for the experience controls?

• On icon sizing, particularly on desktop, our reason for choosing 44px for the icon size is to comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 guidelines for Target Sizes which states 44px as the requirement to reach a AAA rating for accessibility. These guidelines are intended to apply to desktop as well as mobile.

[Puma_incredible (Stickz)]

Can y’all bring back the pin feature for the hamburger menu?

[Hyorza (hyor)]

i liked the old top bar better

edit: its my opinion, the old top bar was way easier and reliable to use, and only had it for over a year and quite frankly i didnt like it when i had this rolled out

[caibles (cables)]

@workbloxing

How did Roblox determine the icon sizing for the experience controls?

• On icon sizing, particularly on desktop, our reason for choosing 44px for the icon size is to comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 guidelines for Target Sizes which states 44px as the requirement to reach a AAA rating for accessibility. These guidelines are intended to apply to desktop as well as mobile.

At least yall provided a reason this time, but why can’t we just keep it small unless we need accessibility?

Edit:

I prepared a comparison between two images of the same game (Arcane Odyssey by vetexgames if you’re curious) with the old and new UI

Screen size is 1920x1080

Without further ado…

---

Oh, and here’s what the Starscape UI looks like now

I mean at least it doesn’t cover the system name ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[kavi_conner (Kavi)]

Looks pretty cool! I’m assuming this started rolling out, is there a timeline for when this will be available for all users? For example, at the end of this week, or are all users getting the new experience controls today?

[QuirkySquid]

The rollout should now be complete: if you aren’t seeing it, try restarting the app

[HooferBevelops (Hoofer)]

So happy that this is finally out! It’s been such a struggle having to maintain two UI topbar styles for our experience. The new one is far more dynamic and fits our game a lot more. Thanks a lot, Roblox team!

[TheRealANDRO (ANDRO)]

@workbloxing

You cannot change the location or visibility of the experience controls. They will be on the left and sit next to the Roblox (Escape) menu. The goal is to create a consistent experience for leaderboard, inventory, voice, chat, reporting, etc. across all experiences.

I still cannot understand why we can’t disable it. This is not about being consistent, it’s about giving developers freedom over their experiences.

You claim to have gotten feedback from us, but all you did was to ignore the important details and requests while focusing on non-important aspects of this update.

My last post here stands valid:

Get Ready for Updated Experience Controls

Can we get a reason for this? This is completely, and I mean it, completely useless. Experience Controls > Report Menu (2 Clicks) Roblox Menu > Report Panel (2 Clicks) I see no benefits from this whatsoever as it takes the same amount of actions for a user to access the Report Menu, this only creates more clutter. This feature is advertised as an update that removes clutter and yet, it takes more space unnecessarily. Many developers, including me, requested that you fix this, but unfortunat…

[Iliuminatis (・ロ・)]

App restarted, still same old UI. Though I prefer old one, it would be better to know what other players are seeing to avoid any UI issues.

[karlos_800 (karlos)]

As @Profesornoobz1440 said on the previous topic, we NEED the option to fully hide the Hamburger Icon/Unibar

[completelyhazel (hazel)]

could you switch the health bar back to how it looked originally, please? i feel like this was made extremely thick because you wanted to fill that empty space

… which actually looks super odd if your health’s at max:

i think that this could be fixed by making it thinner and moving the leaderboard upwards, though, i don’t know whether that might interfere with topbar-related stuff

[Thelegender (BluNomad)]

Maybe something you all are already planning to fix in a future release, but “respawn” and “reset” are used interchangeably in the UI. It would make sense to consistently use either one or the other.

[RuizuKun_Dev (Kitsune)]

nice, was wondering how do developers control the menu with code?

[caibles (cables)]

Or, even better, give us the option to turn the healthbar off and let us use our own custom one. I really just don’t understand why they drag their feet so much when it comes to the experience controls

[dancepants2012b (Dance)]

add a way to resize the menu its way too big. just let people edited it to how they like it

[unmiss (Jack)]

You literally can do that by using StarterGui:SetCoreGuiEnabled

[FatelessDrifter (Drifter)]

Honestly? I dig it! People that want it disabled should definitely have that option though.

[luabarnes (luca)]

I have one request

Please let us devs adjust the button transparency (and maybe even color), They look a bit dark on a couple my games that use softer colors

If you need to maybe you could put a maximum limit on how transparent they can get so you know they will always at least be visible. Like maybe no more than .75

I will also say that the new health bar is kinda bad. sorry guys but it kinda is. Maybe make a circular health bar to the right of the hamburger menu?
Here, I made an example for you:

I will say the new topbar has improved so much since you first announced it. I like the hamburger menu a lot better and the icon looks better

[Gagey_Wageyy (Gage)]

Finally, no more accidentally clicking the mic button above my head when in a fullscreen menu and getting warnings for swearing!