ElvUI: a Comprehensive Guide

[Pandacho 286]

The guide was updated for Legion.

Profile to import is here.

 

ElvUI is a full UI replacement. It completely replaces the default Blizzard UI at every level with a new and better interface. It has multiple addons and plug-ins integrated into it, such as Dominos action bars and TidyPlates. As such, you’ll only ever have to update ElvUI and not worry too much about its individual components. This UI will arrange your interface to be more flexible and practical.

 

DOWNLOADING AND INSTALLATION

Download ElvUI from Tukui. The version on Curse is outdated.

Following the above link, you will find two addons to download: Tukui and ElvUI. You need ElvUI:

 

 

Unpack the downloaded archive to your WoW Addons folder (World of Warcraft -> Interface -> Addons)

 

 

If you had ElvUI previously installed, you'd get a message asking to replace the current folder - click 'Yes':

 

 

Log in to WoW. Click the 'AddOns' button in the left bottom corner of your character selection screen. Make sure that both ElvUI Config and ElvUI are enabled in the addons list:

 

 

Press 'Enter World'. ElvUI config can be reached from the Main Menu (in game press Esc button-> press ElvUI button) or by typing /ec in chat.

When entering the game for the first time after installing the addon, you'll get this screen :

 

If you can't see this Installation screen, type /ec in chat and then press 'Install' button in the config window:

You’ll now have a 8 step configuration process. Do not skip it if you don’t have ElvUI already configured on some other toon.

 

[1] Click on ‘Continue’ to begin:

[2] Step 2 of 8: CVars: Click on ‘Setup CVars’ → ‘Continue’

[3] Step 3 of 8: Chat: Click on ‘Setup Chat’ → ‘Continue’

[4] Step 4 of 8: Theme Setup: you can try all 3 buttons (Classic/Dark/Class) to see the difference and click ‘Continue’ after you decided.

[5] Step 5 of 8: Resolution: choose ‘High Resolution’ if you have a 15 inch + monitor, otherwise choose ‘Low Resolution’ → ‘Continue’

[6] Step 6 of 8: Layout: Choose the option you are interested in - a player / target / target of target Unit Frames will be at the bottom of the screen, not on the top and in a slightly different position for every role (You can click on every role to see the difference and to choose what you like better). If you chose a Healer role, you will get an announcement asking you to install the Clique addon, just click ‘Yes’ and ignore it, no need to install anything.

 

Click ‘Continue’ when you’re done.

[8] Step 7 of 8: Auras: I would advice for ‘Icons Only’ - we don’t need a million bars and timers for standard raid buffs. We all know that they are present. But you can select the ‘Aura Bars&Icons’ option too if it’s you taste. Click ‘Continue’ when you’re done.

[10] Step 8 of 8: Installation Complete: You’re done with the basic installation, hit the ‘Finished’ button and it will reload your UI.

After restarting, you’ll get a screen with a support announcement and tips. Check “Disable”, then press “Hide” if you don’t want these tooltips to come up. I suggest not to hide them until you’re completely familiar with ElvUI.

Now we’re going to configure your UI a bit more.

Typing /ec in chat will open the Config window.

 

GENERAL:

There are some very nice options here that make your life easier:

 

- ‘Announce Interrupts’ dropdown menu. Set this to ‘None’ if you are using some other addon for it or set to any of the other options: Party/Raid/Say, etc.

- Select an ‘Auto Repair’ option from the drop down menu.

- Tick ‘Vendor Grays’ - awesome option!

- Tick “Auto Greed/DE’ to automate rolling on greens. It’ll automatically choose Disenchant or Greed (depending on whether an enchanter is available or not). This option works only on max level so don’t be afraid to DE something useful.

- You can disable the Order Hall Command Bar from here too. 

- In the Objective Frame tab you can change its length.

 

Go through the rest of options and check whatever you feel useful.

 

MAPS:

Before Legion it was a dropdown menu that was changed recently to a stand alone config window:

While a 'World Map' tab is pretty obvious, you should configure properly the Minimap section:

- Pay close attention to the Minimap Buttons menu (Garrison / Calendar / Mail / LFR Queue, etc) - you can resize, move, hide / hide in combat all the buttons.

You should pay attention to the ‘Hide’ button. For some reason it is ticked by default so you’ll have to untick it for every button you want to see on your Minimap.

 

DATABARS:

Same as Maps, it was a dropdown menu in General tab and was changed recently to a stand alone config window:

If you are still leveling or grinding Faction Reputations, you can configure here

- XP Bar & Reputation 

You can choose here all the standard options - move, resize, vertical / horizontal, show on mouseover.

Tick 'Hide at Max level' for the XP bar - it's a nice option.

Artifact Bar:

A very useful in Legion - it shows gained/needed for the next trait AP for your currently equipped Artifact and open the Traits window on mouse click.

 

Go through the rest of options and check whatever you feel useful.

 

ACTION BARS

 

- Tick ‘Enabled’

- Tick ‘Keybind Text’. Displays bind names on the action buttons.

- Tick ‘Macro Text’. Displays macro name on the action button so you'll be aware that pressing this button you'll run a macro and not a single ability.

- Change ‘Font’ and ‘Font Size’ to whatever works for you.

 

‘Pick Up Action Key’ is the button that you must hold down in order to drag an ability to another action button - prevents from accidental messing with the buttons.

 

Now check “Enabled” for Micro Bar (this is the one with Quests, LFR, Char Info, Spellbook, etc icons), any of the Bars 1-6, Pet Bar and Stance Bar. Actually, you can enable only Bar 1 and 2 or whatever works for you and disable all the rest.

For every bar, there is a ‘Mouse over’ tick box - this will simply hide the bar until you mouseover it, which is useful for bars that are irrelevant during raids.

In enabled Bars, you can choose the number of buttons per bar and vertical or horizontal style.

- The ‘Buttons’ slider will allow you to set how many buttons a bar will have (the button cap is 12 though, you cannot have more than that in a single bar).

- ‘Buttons Per Row’ - choose 12 if you want a horizontal bar, choose 1, if you want it vertical bar.

 

Actually you don’t have to have exactly 12 buttons per bar. It can be any amount from 1 to 12 or even 2 rows of 6 buttons or any other configuration that you prefer.

If you want to hide an Action Bar in a specific situation, for example during a raid, you have to type

[vehicleui] hide; [overridebar] hide; [petbattle] hide; [nocombat] hide; show;

in the 'Visibility State' window.

 

Moving elements

Now we will sort the bars on the screen. Click ‘Toggle Anchors:’

 

You will then get this screen:

Just mouse drag your bars to the proper position.

If you feel that your bars are stick to something all the time, just untick ‘Sticky Frames’ option in the central Menu.

In addition, you get a 'Nudge' menu with arrows and numbers on every bar you are clicking - you can use it for fine tuning (if you are interested in extremely precise positioning ^^)

When you’re done, click on ‘Lock’ in the central Menu.

 

Key Bindings

To configure Hot Keys on your Action Bars, click on ‘Keybind Mode.’

You will get this window pop-up:

Tick Character specific Key Bindings only if you want different positioning of hotkeys on the bars for different characters. You’ll get an explanation of what to do on the screen. Do not forget to click ‘Save’ when you’re done.

 

BAGS:

Click ‘Enable,’ if you want to use ElvUI’s bag system. It’s nice, tidy and flexible in size and positioning. If you have an external bag addon, you will have to disable ElvUI’s bag system or you’ll get both of them messed up.

I personally preferred to disable ElvUI bag system and use AdiBags addon. It’s the same graphic style but has very good smart section division by default including different gear sets - no need to configure anything. In addition you can have all the Currencies you want to track at the bottom line.

Looks like this:

 

BUFFS AND DEBUFFS

Both ‘Enable’ and ‘Disabled Blizzard’ must be checked.

 

CHAT:

You can play here with the options or leave it untouched, move and resize chat  windows, remove / split existing or add new, add timestamps, enable chat history, etc.

Let’s try to add a new chat window, so you’ll know how to do this.

 

[1] Right click on the ‘General’ tab of your Chat window and select ‘Create New Window’ from the menu.

[2] Name this window ‘Raid.’

[3] Right-click on the newly created ‘Raid’ chat window and select ‘Settings.’

[4] From the ‘Chat’ category, untick everything except ‘Party, Party Leader, Raid, Raid Leader, Raid Warning, Instance, Instance Leader.’

[5] From the ‘Global Channels’ category, untick everything.

[6] Click ‘Okay.’

Remember that you can move chat windows - you will have to untick ‘Lock Positions’ option to do this.

 

DATATEXTS:

Datatexts are all the additional data that could be displayed at the bottom of chat windows, Action Bars and Minimap. 

You can also interact with the datatexts. For example, clicking on Time will bring up Calendar, on Durability - your Character Info, on Spec - will change it to the secondary, mouseover on System - shows your addon list with the memory used, etc.

There is a nice tab 'Currencies' where you may configure which currencies and in what format you want to see in Datatexts.

Frankly, there are a million possibilities to try :)

 

NAMEPLATES 

If you are using external addon for the Nameplates, you’ll have to untick “Enable” here.

Check “Enable” in tabs you want Nameplates on (I personally check only Enemy NPC but it's completely your choice):

There are a lot of options to track and to choose from but they are all very user friendly so I wouldn't explain them one by one.

Pay Attention that the Elite Icon was finally added to ElvUI so you don't need to write custom texts to track Rare and Elite mobs anymore.

 

SKINS / TOOLTIPS / FILTERS

Doesn’t matter. Do whatever you want here.

 

UNITFRAMES:

Enable only the UNIT FRAMES tabs that are relevant for you. All the rest - keep them disabled.

You should disable all the Blizzard frames - keeping both Blizz and ElvUI frames creates unnecessary mess on your screen.

For example as a raid healer I disable all the party/raid frames because I’m using VuhDo for it.

You can use Clique and mouseover macros with ElvUI Unit Frames.

ElvUI Raid Frames are very flexible: you can move and resize them, choose vertical or horizontal positioning. Any target data, buffs and debuffs could be configured separately for every kind of group. You can add and remove targets of your target, focus or pet, their cast bars, name, HP, level, raid icons, etc.

If you are interested in tracking incoming heals or  threat, there are options for this too.

 

PROFILES:

The most awesome thing about ElvUI is that after you did it once, no need to configure the addon for every character. Just choose the toon or a named profile that you want to copy the settings from. If you have a viable offspec, you can also ‘Enable Dual Profile’ to configure it.

Or you can just save different profiles for 10-man / 25-man raid or for tank / dps spec.

Another nice option is to share your profile with other player (obviously they should have ElvUI too) when targeting them.

 

I'm sharing my profile here for those who prefer not to start from scratch.

Use 'Import Profile' button to import :)

[Krazyito 521]

And remember, you can disable any part of ElvUI if you with to use a separate add-on or standard blizzard UI

[Sarumhann 0]

So I have been thinking about changing my UI and downloading ElvUI. I'm not looking for advice on which addon I should use, I am wondering if I can save my current UI so that if I remove ElvUI in the future I can revert to my current setup. If so how?

Edited July 20, 2015 by Sarumhann

[Orthios 271]

So I have been thinking about changing my UI and downloading ElvUI. I'm not looking for advice on which addon I should use, I am wondering if I can save my current UI so that if I remove ElvUI in the future I can revert to my current setup.

If you just turn off the addons (not delete) you would replace with ElvUI, they save the settings that they currently have.

[Pandacho 286]

So I have been thinking about changing my UI and downloading ElvUI. I'm not looking for advice on which addon I should use, I am wondering if I can save my current UI so that if I remove ElvUI in the future I can revert to my current setup. If so how?

Make a copy of you current WTF and Interface folders and save them outside of WoW folder.

If ElvUI wouldn't work for you, just move your saved folders back.

[Bubbagrim 0]

unzipped the file and dropped it in my wow addon folder and it wont load to my add ons in game. don't even see it to check it.

[Pandacho 286]

unzipped the file and dropped it in my wow addon folder and it wont load to my add ons in game. don't even see it to check it.

 

I added step-by-step explanation how to download and install ElvUI to the guide.

[Pandacho 286]

A small explanation for those who want to add Group Number to the Raid Frames:

 

Open ElvUI Configuration, go to 'Raid Frames'. In 'Custom Texts' line type 'Group' and press 'Okay'.

 

 

Open the dropdown list and select the line 'Group' that should appear there:

 

 

Type [group] in the 'Text Format' line and adjust its positioning to whatever feels good for you. I used 'Left' in 'Justify' because of 'Role Icon' that I have on the right side.

 

This is what you'll see in your Raid Frames now:

[lynyrd 0]

I installed Elvui, but now I can't locate my spellbook to set up my bars. Any suggestions?

[Pandacho 286]

I installed Elvui, but now I can't locate my spellbook to set up my bars. Any suggestions?

1. Press letter 'P' - it's a shortcut to open spellbook.

 

or

 

2. Press letter 'C' on your minimap to open ElvUI config. Go to 'Action Bars', press '+', go to Micro Bar, make sure that it's enabled and 'Mouse Over' option is off.

Spellbook icon is a part of Micro Bar.

[BirdBrain 0]

I just installed ELVui and love the looks; however, I can't figure out how to unlock the action bars so I can change the spells.

 

I've looked everywhere including Interface>Action bars in wow menu.

In the wow Interface>Action Bars, the Lock Action bar feature is no longer there.

 

Please help :) Thx

[Pandacho 286]

I just installed ELVui and love the looks; however, I can't figure out how to unlock the action bars so I can change the spells.

 

I've looked everywhere including Interface>Action bars in wow menu.

In the wow Interface>Action Bars, the Lock Action bar feature is no longer there.

 

Please help Thx

If you mean replacing a spell with another one, it's Shift+mouse drag to throw away an icon and then just mouse drag from your Spellbook an icon of the spell you want to put in.

[Jaehend 0]

Is there a way to have the ActionBar skin of ElvUI without it changing the bar name?  I only ask as I love the way ElvUI looks and works but I don't really want to have to rewrite bar swapping macros and other such things.  Thanks.

[Eika 1]

Hi thanks for great instruction for setting up Elvui. Now installed and love set up. I have got two probs . The C in map corner has disappeared can't find how to get back? Also buffs etc down right of map? I've checked under buffs etc but can't see anything wrong.

[Purphuros 1]

first thing i have to say is my eyes are so damn sore just trying to use this. how they hell do i increase the size of the ui. i uninstalled it because i physically could not look at my screen. it had made it way to small comparred to my screen size. how can i fix it

[Krazyito 521]

 

Try the UI scale, its a WoW options, not a ElvUI option.

[BishopOsiris 0]

Once I finish the configuration process (mine was 8 steps, not 9 btw) my minimap shows no C so I can't access the UI configuration screen to make any changes.  How can this be resolved?

[Trinnah 0]

Once I finish the configuration process (mine was 8 steps, not 9 btw) my minimap shows no C so I can't access the UI configuration screen to make any changes.  How can this be resolved?

 

You must have turned off the bar to the side of the minimap that displays buffs, the config button is linked to it. (Or it turned off by default for some reason) To get to the config without that, type "/ec". To turn the button back on, you can /ec, go to Buffs & Debuffs along the left, then on the right there's a dropdown, select "Consolidated Buffs" and enable it.

[sardaukarz 0]

Hello there,

 

I have the same problem with the C to access the config. I searched forums and find /ec command and it works. I also tried you method in order to re-enable the c (Trinnah) and it does not work.

 

One more thing, the Op suggests to install Minimap button bar. I installed the addon yet my buttons from all the addons, garrison and such are all scattered. So obviously the addon does not work?

 

Thnkz for the help!

[Orangesliice 0]

Hi I remember an older version of Elvis ui where you used to be able to intigrate ur Skada or recount into the right chat box.  Can you still do that and if so how?

Edited June 21, 2016 by Orangesliice

[Pandacho 286]

3 hours ago, Orangesliice said:

Hi I remember an older version of Elvis ui where you used to be able to intigrate ur Skada or recount into the right chat box.  Can you still do that and if so how?

Actually I just checked and it's possible :)

Download the AddOnSkins Addon and just throw it to the main Addons folder (not into ElvUI folder).

Go to the ElvUI Configuration, on the left side you will find AddOnSkins line. Click on it, check 'Single Embed system' and write the name of the addon you want to embed in the next line.

That's it. Now when you right click with the mouse on the right bottom arrow of your right chat panel, it will switch to the embedded addon (Skada, Recount, Details!, etc)

[Orangesliice 0]

6 minutes ago, Pandacho said:

Hmm, I do have Skada instead of the right chat box while having both of the chat boxes on the left side of the screen but it's not integrated just moved around. Didn't hear about integration.

I just remember an old guild member having it and forgetting how they said they did it...to the Google I shall go lol thanks anyway and great guide  

[Pandacho 286]

6 minutes ago, Orangesliice said:

I just remember an old guild member having it and forgetting how they said they did it...to the Google I shall go lol thanks anyway and great guide  

Yes, sorry, you were right :) I just updated my answer with the proper info.

[Orthios 271]

You can also use the dual embed to embed 2 Windows into the chat panel.  That's what I use to keep both damage and healing meters up with Details!

[AbuHansi 0]

Hi, thanks for the good Guide!

I love the ElvUI but I'd like to change, that i cant see the rarity of mobs. Where do I set that? I have the same grey box for every enemy and I cant help myself haha.

If I oversaw the answer somewhere in this Thread or Google, I'm sorry.