Replacing a UI Button Without Breaking Bindings | Author: Marcos Salinas | Posted on: 07/11/2025

Author: Marcos Salinas Posted on: 07/11/2025

The Problem

While refining the Pause Menu UI in our Unreal Engine 5 project, I ran into a serious issue when replacing a basic button with our custom menu button widget (CodeMenuButton). The goal was to maintain consistency across the main and pause menus, reusing our stylized, font-scalable button. However, when I attempted to rename the new replacement widget to the original name (Button_Resume), Unreal threw a type mismatch error: “Widget Binding is not type LIVE CODING Code Menu Button.”

This was especially problematic because it prevented Blueprint compilation and disrupted all the visual logic relying on that button's variable name. For the end user, this could have blocked pause menu interaction or caused UI crashes during runtime.

The Solution

After debugging, I realized the issue came from Unreal's retained memory of the original widget binding, even after deletion. The engine still recognized Button_Resume as a variable of the old base type, not our custom CodeMenuButton. This hidden binding caused a persistent internal compile error when I tried to reuse the same name for a new widget.

To resolve it, I deleted the Intermediate, Binaries, and Saved folders from the project directory and restarted Unreal to force a clean rebuild of all Blueprint classes. Once the engine had flushed the stale references, I was able to safely re-add the new custom button and name it Button_Resume without further issues.

This solution not only restored functionality, but also ensured our UI buttons are now unified across the entire game, with consistent font scaling and audio behavior — improving both visual clarity and polish for players navigating the menus. This will allow me to continue on with the completion of the Pause Menu UI and the rest of the additional buttons shown.