UMG 3D widget navigation not working in build

I’m struggling with my the navigation not working in build for 3D widgets when using the thumbsticks, D-pad and arrow key buttons (keyboard) while they DO work in the editor.

I have the focus brush enabled and I can see one of the buttons successfully highlighted/focused, I can use spacebar or A on the gamepad to click the currently selected button, but navigating to other buttons does NOT work.

The setup is an actor with a widget component (space set to World) and a widget blueprint that I tried out has a layout of button widgets across the screen.
One of the buttons is chosen as target for the SetKeyboardFocus and SetUserFocus nodes, as i start interaction with this actor.
I have tried all input modes (UI only, game only, game and UI), tried it with ShowMouseCursor on and off.
And yes, I am connecting a Player Controller reference to these nodes.

I am really rattling my brain over what the difference is between in-editor and a build, but it seems as if the navigation is not build correctly in builds (dev/shipping).

I found a solution to the issue:

  1. Use ‘explicit’ widget references instead of depending on the auto-generated navigation.
  2. Or use ‘Custom’ in situations where you need to switch on blueprint/code logic, to change navigation between widgets like in menu’s that change based on whether there is a save game or if certain progress is unlocked.

We had the same issue when we updated the engine from UE 4.21 to 4.23.
The solution for us was to remove(set it to none) the Widget Class in the Widget Component of the actor and create the Widget on runtime instead. On BeginPlay in the actor with the WidgetComponent, CreateWidget and SetWidget->WidgetComponent.

This works for me and solved my problem. The 3D widget navigation is really annoying…