| **[How can I tell whether to dispatch mouse/keyboard to Dear ImGui or my application?](#q-how-can-i-tell-whether-to-dispatch-mousekeyboard-to-dear-imgui-or-my-application)** |
| [How can I enable keyboard or gamepad controls?](#q-how-can-i-enable-keyboard-or-gamepad-controls) |
| [How can I use this on a machine without mouse, keyboard or screen? (input share, remote display)](#q-how-can-i-use-this-on-a-machine-without-mouse-keyboard-or-screen-input-share-remote-display) |
| [I integrated Dear ImGui in my engine and little squares are showing instead of text...](#q-i-integrated-dear-imgui-in-my-engine-and-little-squares-are-showing-instead-of-text) |
| [I integrated Dear ImGui in my engine and some elements are clipping or disappearing when I move windows around...](#q-i-integrated-dear-imgui-in-my-engine-and-some-elements-are-clipping-or-disappearing-when-i-move-windows-around) |
| [I integrated Dear ImGui in my engine and some elements are displaying outside their expected windows boundaries...](#q-i-integrated-dear-imgui-in-my-engine-and-some-elements-are-displaying-outside-their-expected-windows-boundaries) |
| **[About the ID Stack system..<br>Why is my widget not reacting when I click on it?<br>How can I have widgets with an empty label?<br>How can I have multiple widgets with the same label?]<br>How can I have multiple windows with the same label?](#q-about-the-id-stack-system)** |
| [How can I use my own math types instead of ImVec2/ImVec4?](#q-how-can-i-use-my-own-math-types-instead-of-imvec2imvec4) |
| [How can I interact with standard C++ types (such as std::string and std::vector)?](#q-how-can-i-interact-with-standard-c-types-such-as-stdstring-and-stdvector) |
| [How can I load multiple fonts?](#q-how-can-i-load-multiple-fonts) |
| [How can I display and input non-Latin characters such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Cyrillic?](#q-how-can-i-display-and-input-non-latin-characters-such-as-chinese-japanese-korean-cyrillic) |
- Dozens of standalone example applications using e.g. OpenGL/DirectX are provided in the [examples/](https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/blob/master/examples/) folder to explain how to integrate Dear ImGui with your own engine/application. You can run those applications and explore them.
- See demo code in [imgui_demo.cpp](https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/blob/master/imgui_demo.cpp) and particularly the `ImGui::ShowDemoWindow()` function. The demo covers most features of Dear ImGui, so you can read the code and see its output.
- See documentation and comments at the top of [imgui.cpp](https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/blob/master/imgui.cpp) + general API comments in [imgui.h](https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/blob/master/imgui.h).
- The [Issues](https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/issues) and [Discussions](https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/discussions) sections can be searched for past questions and issues.
- The `ImGui::ShowMetricsWindow()` function exposes lots of internal information and tools. Although it is primary designed as a debugging tool, having access to that information tends to help understands concepts.
(The library misleadingly started its life in 2014 as "ImGui" due to the fact that I didn't give it a proper name when I released 1.0, and had no particular expectation that it would take off. However, the term IMGUI (immediate-mode graphical user interface) was coined before and is being used in variety of other situations e.g. Unity uses it own implementation of the IMGUI paradigm. To reduce the ambiguity without affecting existing code bases, I have decided in December 2015 a fully qualified name "Dear ImGui" for this library.
I occasionally tag [Releases](https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/releases) but it is generally safe and recommended to sync to master/latest. The library is fairly stable and regressions tend to be fixed fast when reported.
For first-time users having issues compiling/linking/running or issues loading fonts, please use [GitHub Discussions](https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/discussions).
Important: you should always pass your mouse/keyboard inputs to Dear ImGui, regardless of the value `io.WantCaptureMouse`/`io.WantCaptureKeyboard`. This is because e.g. we need to detect that you clicked in the void to unfocus its own windows, and other reasons.
**Note:** The `io.WantCaptureMouse` is more correct that any manual attempt to "check if the mouse is hovering a window" (don't do that!). It handle mouse dragging correctly (both dragging that started over your application or over a Dear ImGui window) and handle e.g. popup and modal windows blocking inputs.
**Note:** Those flags are updated by `ImGui::NewFrame()`. However it is generally more correct and easier that you poll flags from the previous frame, then submit your inputs, then call `NewFrame()`. If you attempt to do the opposite (which is generally harder) you are likely going to submit your inputs after `NewFrame()`, and therefore too late.
**Note:** If you are using a touch device, you may find use for an early call to `UpdateHoveredWindowAndCaptureFlags()` to correctly dispatch your initial touch. We will work on better out-of-the-box touch support in the future.
**Note:** Text input widget releases focus on the "KeyDown" event of the Return key, so the subsequent "KeyUp" event that your application receive will typically have `io.WantCaptureKeyboard == false`. Depending on your application logic it may or not be inconvenient to receive that KeyUp event. You might want to track which key-downs were targeted for Dear ImGui, e.g. with an array of bool, and filter out the corresponding key-ups.)
### Q: How can I enable keyboard or gamepad controls?
- The gamepad/keyboard navigation is fairly functional and keeps being improved. The initial focus was to support game controllers, but keyboard is becoming increasingly and decently usable. Gamepad support is particularly useful to use Dear ImGui on a game console (e.g. PS4, Switch, XB1) without a mouse connected!
- Keyboard: set `io.ConfigFlags |= ImGuiConfigFlags_NavEnableKeyboard` to enable.
- You may also use a third party solution such as [netImgui](https://github.com/sammyfreg/netImgui), [Remote ImGui](https://github.com/JordiRos/remoteimgui) or [imgui-ws](https://github.com/ggerganov/imgui-ws) which sends the vertices to render over the local network, allowing you to use Dear ImGui even on a screen-less machine. See [Wiki](https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/wiki) index for most details.
- For touch inputs, you can increase the hit box of widgets (via the `style.TouchPadding` setting) to accommodate for the lack of precision of touch inputs, but it is recommended you use a mouse or gamepad to allow optimizing for screen real-estate and precision.
- If this happens using the standard backends: A) have you modified the font atlas after `ImGui_ImplXXX_NewFrame()`? B) maybe the texture failed to upload, which could happens if for some reason your texture is too big. Also see [docs/FONTS.md](https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/blob/master/docs/FONTS.md).
- If this happens with a custom backend: make sure you have uploaded the font texture to the GPU, that all shaders are rendering states are setup properly (e.g. texture is bound). Compare your code to existing backends and use a graphics debugger such as [RenderDoc](https://renderdoc.org) to debug your rendering states.
Refer to rendering backends in the [examples/](https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/tree/master/examples) folder for references of how to handle the `ClipRect` field.
**Unique ID are used internally to track active widgets and occasionally associate state to widgets.<BR>
Unique ID are implicitly built from the hash of multiple elements that identify the "path" to the UI element.**
Since Dear ImGui 1.85 you can use `Demo>Tools>Stack Tool` or call `ImGui::ShowStackToolWindow()`. The tool display intermediate values leading to the creation of a unique ID, making things easier to debug and understand.
- Refer to [Image Loading and Displaying Examples](https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/wiki/Image-Loading-and-Displaying-Examples) on the [Wiki](https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/wiki).
- You may use functions such as `ImGui::Image()`, `ImGui::ImageButton()` or lower-level `ImDrawList::AddImage()` to emit draw calls that will use your own textures.
- Actual textures are identified in a way that is up to the user/engine. Those identifiers are stored and passed as ImTextureID (void*) value.
- Loading image files from the disk and turning them into a texture is not within the scope of Dear ImGui (for a good reason).
**Please read documentations or tutorials on your graphics API to understand how to display textures on the screen before moving onward.**
Long explanation:
- Dear ImGui's job is to create "meshes", defined in a renderer-agnostic format made of draw commands and vertices. At the end of the frame those meshes (ImDrawList) will be displayed by your rendering function. They are made up of textured polygons and the code to render them is generally fairly short (a few dozen lines). In the examples/ folder we provide functions for popular graphics API (OpenGL, DirectX, etc.).
- Each rendering function decides on a data type to represent "textures". The concept of what is a "texture" is entirely tied to your underlying engine/graphics API.
We carry the information to identify a "texture" in the ImTextureID type.
ImTextureID is nothing more that a void*, aka 4/8 bytes worth of data: just enough to store 1 pointer or 1 integer of your choice.
Dear ImGui doesn't know or understand what you are storing in ImTextureID, it merely pass ImTextureID values until they reach your rendering function.
- In the [examples/](https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/tree/master/examples) backends, for each graphics API we decided on a type that is likely to be a good representation for specifying an image from the end-user perspective. This is what the _examples_ rendering functions are using:
For example, in the OpenGL example backend we store raw OpenGL texture identifier (GLuint) inside ImTextureID.
Whereas in the DirectX11 example backend we store a pointer to ID3D11ShaderResourceView inside ImTextureID, which is a higher-level structure tying together both the texture and information about its format and how to read it.
- If you have a custom engine built over e.g. OpenGL, instead of passing GLuint around you may decide to use a high-level data type to carry information about the texture as well as how to display it (shaders, etc.). The decision of what to use as ImTextureID can always be made better knowing how your codebase is designed. If your engine has high-level data types for "textures" and "material" then you may want to use them.
If you are starting with OpenGL or DirectX or Vulkan and haven't built much of a rendering engine over them, keeping the default ImTextureID representation suggested by the example backends is probably the best choice.
Once you understand this design you will understand that loading image files and turning them into displayable textures is not within the scope of Dear ImGui.
Refer to [Image Loading and Displaying Examples](https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/wiki/Image-Loading-and-Displaying-Examples) on the [Wiki](https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/wiki) to find simplified examples for loading textures with OpenGL, DirectX9 and DirectX11.
C/C++ tip: a void* is pointer-sized storage. You may safely store any pointer or integer into it by casting your value to ImTextureID / void*, and vice-versa.
Because both end-points (user code and rendering function) are under your control, you know exactly what is stored inside the ImTextureID / void*.
Examples:
```cpp
GLuint my_tex = XXX;
void* my_void_ptr;
my_void_ptr = (void*)(intptr_t)my_tex; // cast a GLuint into a void* (we don't take its address! we literally store the value inside the pointer)
my_tex = (GLuint)(intptr_t)my_void_ptr; // cast a void* into a GLuint
ID3D11ShaderResourceView* my_dx11_srv = XXX;
void* my_void_ptr;
my_void_ptr = (void*)my_dx11_srv; // cast a ID3D11ShaderResourceView* into an opaque void*
my_dx11_srv = (ID3D11ShaderResourceView*)my_void_ptr; // cast a void* into a ID3D11ShaderResourceView*
You can edit [imconfig.h](https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/blob/master/imconfig.h) and setup the `IM_VEC2_CLASS_EXTRA`/`IM_VEC4_CLASS_EXTRA` macros to add implicit type conversions.
This way you'll be able to use your own types everywhere, e.g. passing `MyVector2` or `glm::vec2` to ImGui functions instead of `ImVec2`.
- Being highly portable (backends/bindings for several languages, frameworks, programming style, obscure or older platforms/compilers), and aiming for compatibility & performance suitable for every modern real-time game engines, dear imgui does not use any of std C++ types. We use raw types (e.g. char* instead of std::string) because they adapt to more use cases.
- To use ImGui::InputText() with a std::string or any resizable string class, see [misc/cpp/imgui_stdlib.h](https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/blob/master/misc/cpp/imgui_stdlib.h).
- Refer to "Demo > Examples > Custom Rendering" in the demo window and read the code of `ShowExampleAppCustomRendering()` in `imgui_demo.cpp` from more examples.
- To generate colors: you can use the macro `IM_COL32(255,255,255,255)` to generate them at compile time, or use `ImGui::GetColorU32(IM_COL32(255,255,255,255))` or `ImGui::GetColorU32(ImVec4(1.0f,1.0f,1.0f,1.0f))` to generate a color that is multiplied by the current value of `style.Alpha`.
- Math operators: if you have setup `IM_VEC2_CLASS_EXTRA` in `imconfig.h` to bind your own math types, you can use your own math types and their natural operators instead of ImVec2. ImVec2 by default doesn't export any math operators in the public API. You may use `#define IMGUI_DEFINE_MATH_OPERATORS``#include "imgui_internal.h"` to use the internally defined math operators, but instead prefer using your own math library and set it up in `imconfig.h`.
- You can use `ImGui::GetBackgroundDrawList()` or `ImGui::GetForegroundDrawList()` to access draw lists which will be displayed behind and over every other dear imgui windows (one bg/fg drawlist per viewport). This is very convenient if you need to quickly display something on the screen that is not associated to a dear imgui window.
- You can also create your own empty window and draw inside it. Call Begin() with the NoBackground | NoDecoration | NoSavedSettings | NoInputs flags (The `ImGuiWindowFlags_NoDecoration` flag itself is a shortcut for NoTitleBar | NoResize | NoScrollbar | NoCollapse). Then you can retrieve the ImDrawList* via `GetWindowDrawList()` and draw to it in any way you like.
`- You can create your own ImDrawList instance. You'll need to initialize them with `ImGui::GetDrawListSharedData()`, or create your own instancing ImDrawListSharedData`, and then call your renderer function with your own ImDrawList or ImDrawData data.
- Looking for fun? The [ImDrawList coding party 2020](https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/issues/3606) thread is full of "don't do this at home" extreme uses of the ImDrawList API.
The short answer is: obtain the desired DPI scale, load your fonts resized with that scale (always round down fonts size to nearest integer), and scale your Style structure accordingly using `style.ScaleAllSizes()`.
Your ui code should avoid using hardcoded constants for size and positioning. Prefer to express values as multiple of reference values such as `ImGui::GetFontSize()` or `ImGui::GetFrameHeight()`. So e.g. instead of seeing a hardcoded height of 500 for a given item/window, you may want to use `30*ImGui::GetFontSize()` instead.
Down the line Dear ImGui will provide a variety of standardized reference values to facilitate using this.
Applications in the `examples/` folder are not DPI aware partly because they are unable to load a custom font from the file-system (may change that in the future).
The reason DPI is not auto-magically solved in stock examples is that we don't yet have a satisfying solution for the "multi-dpi" problem (using the `docking` branch: when multiple viewport windows are over multiple monitors using different DPI scale). The current way to handle this on the application side is:
- Create and maintain one font atlas per active DPI scale (e.g. by iterating `platform_io.Monitors[]` before `NewFrame()`).
- Hook `platform_io.OnChangedViewport()` to detect when a `Begin()` call makes a Dear ImGui window change monitor (and therefore DPI).
- In the hook: swap atlas, swap style with correctly sized one, remap the current font from one atlas to the other (may need to maintain a remapping table of your fonts at variying DPI scale).
This approach is relatively easy and functional but come with two issues:
- It's not possibly to reliably size or position a window ahead of `Begin()` without knowing on which monitor it'll land.
- Style override may be lost during the `Begin()` call crossing monitor boundaries. You may need to do some custom scaling mumbo-jumbo if you want your `OnChangedViewport()` handler to preserve style overrides.
Please note that if you are not using multi-viewports with multi-monitors using different DPI scale, you can ignore all of this and use the simpler technique recommended at the top.
### Q: Can you create elaborate/serious tools with Dear ImGui?
Yes. People have written game editors, data browsers, debuggers, profilers and all sort of non-trivial tools with the library. In my experience the simplicity of the API is very empowering. Your UI runs close to your live data. Make the tools always-on and everybody in the team will be inclined to create new tools (as opposed to more "offline" UI toolkits where only a fraction of your team effectively creates tools). The list of sponsors below is also an indicator that serious game teams have been using the library.
Dear ImGui is very programmer centric and the immediate-mode GUI paradigm might require you to readjust some habits before you can realize its full potential. Dear ImGui is about making things that are simple, efficient and powerful.
Dear ImGui is built to be efficient and scalable toward the needs for AAA-quality applications running all day. The IMGUI paradigm offers different opportunities for optimization that the more typical RMGUI paradigm.
Somehow. You can alter the look of the interface to some degree: changing colors, sizes, padding, rounding, fonts. However, as Dear ImGui is designed and optimized to create debug tools, the amount of skinning you can apply is limited. There is only so much you can stray away from the default look and feel of the interface. Dear ImGui is NOT designed to create user interface for games, although with ingenious use of the low-level API you can do it.
A reasonably skinned application may look like (screenshot from [#2529](https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/issues/2529#issuecomment-524281119))
Dear ImGui takes advantage of a few C++ languages features for convenience but nothing anywhere Boost insanity/quagmire. Dear ImGui does NOT require C++11 so it can be used with most old C++ compilers. Dear ImGui doesn't use any C++ header file. Language-wise, function overloading and default parameters are used to make the API easier to use and code more terse. Doing so I believe the API is sitting on a sweet spot and giving up on those features would make the API more cumbersome. Other features such as namespace, constructors and templates (in the case of the ImVector<> class) are also relied on as a convenience.
There is an auto-generated [c-api for Dear ImGui (cimgui)](https://github.com/cimgui/cimgui) by Sonoro1234 and Stephan Dilly. It is designed for creating bindings to other languages. If possible, I would suggest using your target language functionalities to try replicating the function overloading and default parameters used in C++ else the API may be harder to use. Also see [Bindings](https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/wiki/Bindings) for various third-party bindings.
- Businesses: please reach out to `contact AT dearimgui.com` if you work in a place using Dear ImGui! We can discuss ways for your company to fund development via invoiced technical support, maintenance or sponsoring contacts. This is among the most useful thing you can do for Dear ImGui. With increased funding, we can hire more people working on this project.
- Individuals: you can support continued maintenance and development via PayPal donations. See [README](https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/blob/master/docs/README.md).
- If you are experienced with Dear ImGui and C++, look at [GitHub Issues](https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/issues), [GitHub Discussions](https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/discussions), the [Wiki](https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/wiki), read [docs/TODO.txt](https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/blob/master/docs/TODO.txt) and see how you want to help and can help!
You may post screenshot or links in the [gallery threads](https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/issues/4451). Visuals are ideal as they inspire other programmers. Disclosing your use of Dear ImGui helps the library grow credibility, and help other teams and programmers with taking decisions.
- If you have issues or if you need to hack into the library, even if you don't expect any support it is useful that you share your issues or sometimes incomplete PR.
