While working on my game’s UI, I needed a blank button to serve as a container because TextButton doesn’t natively support text padding/margins—so I had to place a TextLabel inside an empty button as a child. While deciding whether to use an ImageButton or a TextButton for that empty parent button, I came across this specific line in the official ImageButton documentation:
“If you disable image rendering by setting ImageTransparency to 1, it will result in a plain rectangle that can be used as a button. However, it may be better to use a blank TextButton instead.”
I searched the DevForum to find the exact technical reason behind this recommendation, but I couldn’t find any deep discussion or staff confirmation about why a blank TextButton is objectively better.
I have a few hypotheses:
Rendering Pipeline: Does a transparent ImageButton still go through the texture binding and rendering loop (Draw Calls), whereas a TextButton just renders a simple quad?
Asset Fetching: Does the engine attempt to fetch a null/blank asset if it’s an ImageButton, causing micro-overheads?
Memory: Is there a difference in memory usage between the two classes when left blank?
Is this recommendation simply a semantic “best practice,” or are there actual performance implications at the engine level (especially when having hundreds of blank buttons for custom UI interactions)?
This is an excellent technical question, and your hypotheses are actually spot-on regarding how the Roblox engine handles UI.
To answer your core question: The documentation suggests a blank TextButton primarily due to Rendering Pipeline and State Overhead (aligning with your Hypotheses 1 & 3).
Even if an ImageButton has ImageTransparency = 1 or an empty string "" for the Image property, the class still carries texture-dependent properties under the hood (such as HoverImage and PressedImage). During user interactions (hovering, clicking), the UI thread still evaluates these states to check if a texture update is required.
On the other hand, a TextButton with Text = "" bypasses the texture rendering pipeline entirely. It evaluates as a simple primitive quad (or a complete no-op if BackgroundTransparency = 1). While the memory footprint difference per instance is micro, when scaling to hundreds of custom interactive UI elements, using a blank TextButton objectively reduces the calculation overhead on the UI thread.
However, I want to address the root cause of your issue:
“because TextButton itself doesn’t natively support text padding… therefore I must put a child TextLabel inside an empty button.”
You actually do not need this parent-child workaround anymore!
You can simply use a single TextButton, and insert a UIPadding instance as its child. The UIPadding constraint will natively apply the exact padding/margins to the text inside the TextButton.
By doing this, you eliminate the need for a container button entirely. Cutting your UI instance count in half is by far the most impactful performance optimization you can make here!