Now in Beta: Cleaner, More Organized Menus Across Premiere Pro

[mattchristensen]

We’ve taken a fresh look at the application, panel, and context menus across Premiere Pro and developed a new organizational system to bring editors all the same functionality in a more concise and discoverable way. Even on a 13-inch laptop, you’ll never have to scroll a menu to get your work done.

Our approach to organizing the menus:

1. Aggressively organize into submenus. Commands stay in the same menu as before, but the submenus mean the menu stays short and readable.
2. Give useful names to the new submenus. Editors new to Premiere Pro can more quickly learn what the menu items do.
3. Be consistent when similar items appear in different menus. Whether in the Project or Timeline panel, common items like “Label” or “Media File Properties” appear in the same parts of menus.

Across the application, menus that were updated average a 40% reduction in height, with some menus shrinking by half.

This is a big change to the feel of using Premiere Pro, and while we took time and care with these new menus, some parts may still need more work. Try them out while they’re in beta [version 25.6 build 39 or later] and let us know how they are working for you. Thank you!

Right clicking on a clip in the Timeline shows a major difference

[mschocker7]

I like it. I always think it's annoying to have to scroll all the way down for Fit To Fill.

[Amitzi Photography]

Interesting idea, but some changes to the UI don't consider different use cases. I would allow for two types of menus, configurable in settings, instead of changing this for all users.

[Teffo]

Estoy de acuerdo.

[Shebbe]

I don't like it. Cleaning up is good but this feels like a fix to aid people working on a 720p or heavily scaled hiDPI display, similar to how it's presented in the example screenshot. If you're a professional editor working in a suite your realestate is much larger so there's less to no need to compress a menu. Sub-menus increase the amount of time a function is found and clicked.

Maybe if there's a way this compacting of the menu can be dynamic where a 1440p and up display can keep showing the big menu or something. Or maybe the solution @Amitzi Photography suggests having it configurable. All the features I happen to use the menu for rather than keyboard shortcuts are in sub menus now...

[BrianLevin]

I would get used to it the way that I did when After Effects made similar changes, but I still, even to this day, keep finding myself wondering where Reveal in Project went in the After Effects menu, even though there is a Reveal submenu.

I am a professional editor on a 1440p monitor, I don't really need this to be done for my sake, but I get it for people working on a laptop. Whenever I do coaching for new editors, inevitably when they join the Zoom call they are on a teeny tiny laptop screen and my first piece of advice is to get a big monitor. This is professional software and it requires a bare minimum of professional tools to make it work.

Personally I'm indifferent to this change as most anything I need in the menus I have mapped to shortcut keys and I'm rarely, if ever, using the right click menu. With that in mind, while I appreciate the thought for users with smaller screens, I don't love that a change like this will throw off more users than the ones it solves problems for. Frankly I'd rather more energy be spent teaching editors how to work with the keyboard shortcuts menu.

[BrianLevin]

Seeing comments below I want to second that Excalibur solves the problems this bad redesign aims to tackle. The context quick call menu exists natively in Cinema4D, it now exists in Resolve, and it should be the thing you build instead of moving menu items around to solve a problem that most professional editors do not have.

Following up on what I said about monitor size and keyboard shortcuts in professional use, it's also likely that professional editors will want to use a tool like Excalibur in their workflows more than they will want to have menu items rearranged on them.

I know this change caters to editors with small screens, but giving them a context menu tool WILL solve their small screen problem. Even better if you can make it such that you involve Ivan and Excalibur here, what he's done for this program is beyond anything I've seen third party developers do to truly help the community. He's amazing and his tool is amazing.

[Ann Bens]

It looks nice and clean but as a mouse person it slows me down.

I dont use ini mini tiny laptops. My 4K screen is big enough dont have to scroll.

I regularly turn on/off video/audio view options and use Nest/make new subsequence.

Adobe is not making my workflow any easier or faster.

Already took away the colored FX badges.

As for the wrench, pop up:

left click > navigate to the desired option> have to wait for the sub menu to pop up 

Reveal in project/explorer buried in a submenu very inconvenient.

[Tom_edit]

I'm going to have to agree with most here, burying things in submenus isn't the answer, it just slows everything down

[_nicdean]

Cool 👍

Rather than spending much time and energy reorganizing menu items and moving UI elements, add an app-wide search feature (aka Mac Spotlight, but for Pr).

The Help menu sort of does this, but only works on Mac and often shows irrelevant items and has bad search. It also doesn't do the command when you click it. It just brings you to the menu item you are seeking.

Use fuzzy seach, auto-complete, let users add favorite items. If someone searches "size" it should be smart enough to show you options for Scale, Transform Effect, Fit Frame, Fill Frame, etc. Everything related to "size".

Example Products where this already works:

1. Spotlight on Mac
2. Excalibur from Knights of the Editing Table
3. FX Console for After Effects
4. Raycast

We don't need to reinvent the wheel or massively change UI. Just let people access what they already want to do, faster.

[Tom_edit]

Especially now that fxconsole is half broken because of the properties window; a native solution would be a highly desired feature.

[Shebbe]

Agree! Even Resolve now has integrated their Fusion based search tool into the Edit and Color pages. 
I would love to see Premiere adopt a native solution that combines FX Console and Excalibur functions.

[lavish_idea00831]

I geniuenly do not like it!! 

For the sake of organization, you made things harder to reach. The organizations wasn't even intuitive, you just put everything into groups without taking considereation of the most used options like Nesting. Now things have gotten futher away from reach!! 

[Ann Bens]

Why is Optical flow buried so deep?

[R Neil Haugen]

Just spent a little bit of time with this, and unlike most others, it seems both sensible and logical. 

And that's on a 2560/1080 main monitor. On my laptop's 16" screen, this would be a vast improvement.

Even on that LG ultrawide desktop monitor, I've had to go to the bottom/scroll ... and then realize oops I'd missed it farther up, unscroll, search, find it. So the speed of use is much better with this change.

And further, the organization of similar items makes sense to me. Unusually so.

[gmc99]

I am also a mouse person (I know I should be using shortcuts).

I would regularly save my Project and previously it was just "File" and "Save"; now "File", "Save", "Save"

Same for Reveal in Project/Explorer which was quick and easy before but now you have to do "Reveal/Edit in",  "Reveal in Project/Explorer"

I suppose I will have to get used to this new layout but it does seem a bit of a pain for how I work.

Would it not be possible to allow some sort of customization so that users could specify which items could appear in the top level; sort of a favorites.  I would certainly include the things I do constantly which are these and also the Optical Flow setting that someone else mentioned.

[R Neil Haugen]

Personally I would never waste the time for saving via mouse even with my hand on it.

CTRL(Cmd)-S is just so fast ... and easy ... doesn't even take a brain cell anymore to do ... 😊

[joelcathey]

Looks nice but practically speaking, I really hate it. Can you at least give us the option to turn this off?

[R Neil Haugen]

Please, to have the best effect, be specific as to what bothers you. The more specificity we give them now, the less annoying it might be.

[joelcathey]

It just slows everything way down. Either you're a keyboard shortcut person and the menus don't matter, or you're a mouse person and navigating to 2-3 submenus is way slower than a quick scroll. And if you're on a moderately large display, you don't even need to scroll. Not to mention that the actual organization they've landed on seems way too granular. Not only is there more to memorize, but we have to memorize a structure that seems arbitrary and unnecessarily 'organized'.

[R Neil Haugen]

Thank you for the additional information. We all work differently and so tge more that comment, the better we'll all be served. 

It would be great if you added where you thought the menu sections included illogical groupings.

And yes we're all different. For me the scrolling takes a LOT more time than scrolling to a sub menu.

As I have to scroll to the end of the visible menu, hover over the arrow, and wait while the computer slowly moves through the other items.

Drives me nuts.

[WONG.Media]

Can we have an option to switch it back? Sub mneus mean extra time when editing. I know some people will like it. I don't. 

[_nicdean]

This update addresses a valid issue where the context menu has grown long. As evidenced in this thread it is a divisive change and some folks dislike it.

I believe I have a simple solution to please everyone.

Measure the pixel dimensions of menu height and the user's screen height.

• If user's screen height has enough vertical space, show the standard menu
• If user's screen height is too small, show the condensed version

With this solution, a small 13" laptop would automatically show the condensed menu. Professional editors on large 4K monitors with ample screen space get the big menu and don't have to search through submenus.

Or take the easy way out and add a checkbox in Preferences > Timeline called "Minimal Clip Context Menu". We can then move on to more important and functional features inside Premiere.

[RRKing]

This is how it's always been done when we developed applications that were cross platform or in different enviroments as some would have tiny screens and some large including ones with no keyboards.  Seems simple enough and wouldn't reqwuire a thread on the subject and as you said could focus on more important things. 

Personally, I hate the new nesting of everything. reminds me of relational database design.  just becuase you can normalize doesn't mean you need to normalize everything. Denormalization can help and in this instance it seem some can be nested and some not.  

[R Neil Haugen]

Like most anything in any video post app, everybody has a different idea as to usefulness or appearance or whatever. All are of course valid as opinions ... and most welcome to get posted here. Especially here, where we can affect how new things are finalized.

But just remember the vast majority of users won't post, sadly. Especially if they like something. Those of us who don't have a far higher likelihood of taking the time, right?

So please do so respecting that everyone else will see it differently, even those who seem to agree with you. Be polite, of course, and enjoy the differences of opinion and working patterns.