Subject: UI Elements Shifting in APK Export (Landscape Mode) – Possibly a Bug?

Hi GDevelop Team,

I’ve been developing a mobile game using GDevelop 5, specifically designed for landscape mode. Everything works fine in the preview inside the engine, but when I export the game as an APK and test it on real Android devices, I encounter a frustrating issue.

UI elements (buttons like jump, shoot, joystick etc.) shift towards the center of the screen. I’ve tried all known solutions:

  • Added Anchor behavior (Bottom/Right or Bottom/Left depending on button)
  • Placed all UI objects on a separate UI layer
  • Disabled camera following for the UI layer
  • Used WindowInnerWidth() and WindowInnerHeight() to dynamically set positions
  • Tried both scene start positioning and “always” event triggers
  • Adjusted screen resolution scaling modes (tried all of them)

But no matter what I do, when testing on phones (especially with different screen ratios), buttons still move or appear out of place. I even tried disabling “update resolution” and setting fixed resolution (1280x720), but then black bars appear and the game looks too small.

Multitouch is also inconsistent — sometimes touch inputs conflict when pressing two buttons at once (like joystick and jump).

I suspect this may be a deeper rendering/scaling issue in APK exports, and not something I can solve via events. If you have any advice or if this is a known issue being worked on, I’d really appreciate your feedback.

Thanks

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