Hide UI - Toggle Compass UI HUD via hotkey

PLEASE NOTE: This mod was made before SKSE was released and was just a holdover until Immersive HUD was completed.

So, you should use Immersive HUD instead; it's much better, and this mod is no longer being developed!

A simple method (potion) that lets you toggle the UI, which you can favorite to have a hotkey for hiding the HUD! Very simple, extremely lightweight.

Don't expect robust/complex/customizable functionality, this is really just a hold-over until we get SKSE / iHUD!

I highly recommend pairing this with SkyHUD to customize your UI experience!

Finding a way to hide and toggle the UI is one of the first things I do in a video game. Open world games feel much more immersive to me when there aren't health bars, magic bars, compasses, enemy position markers, crosshairs, and whatever else all over the screen. Of course, these are very useful when you want them, so the ideal scenario is to be able to have a way to turn them on and off at will.

Unfortunately, in Skyrim Special Edition, we do not yet have the Skyrim Script Extender, or SKSE, and it's looking like that may be a very long ways off. SKSE has always been a requirement to tap into the UI components that are otherwise closed off to the scripting engine, to allow manipulation of specific UI elements, add widgets, and add hotkeys.

However, I've found temporary a workaround that is good enough to hold us over until SKSE is released and mods like Gopher's wonderful Immersive HUD make their way to special edition.

Much like my HideUI mod for Fallout 4, I scoured through the game's engine functions to find a native function that could hide certain UI elements. It turns out there actually is a native function for this. All I had to do was tap into that function in a friendly way.

To do that, this mod adds a potion that when consumed, puts the UI into that mode to hide the elements. When the potion is consumed again, the UI comes back. Each time the potion is consumed, a new one is added to your inventory so you don't run out. Favoriting the potion, then assigning that favorite to a hotkey gives you a handy toggle switch. I use the '2' key since it's right above the W key for movement. Now you have a hotkey to toggle the UI on and off.

The crosshair, compass, activate message, NPC names, enemy health bars, player health, stamina, messages, and magicka will all disappear. If you're using a mod that changes the crosshair, you might still see a very faint remnant of it remaining, but I actually prefer that (this is due to different opacity settings in the interface SWF files.)

Unlike the "TM" console command, dialogue menus, inventory, map, etc. will