Prerequisite: Enable Developer Mode
Before setting up autocomplete, you will need to tell the Unreal Engine (UE) Python Plugin to generate the necessary stubs. You can do this by checking Developer Mode in Editor Preferences > Plugins > Python, then restarting the editor. The generated stub file will be located at PROJECT_DIRECTORY/Intermediate/PythonStub.
PyCharm
Open the Settings window and navigate to Project > Python Interpreter, then click the gear and select Show all. In the Python Interpreter window, you can click the Paths button and click + to add the location of your stub file.
You will also need to raise the maximum Intellisense file size by navigating to Help > Edit Custom Properties and adding the following:
idea.max.intellisense.filesize = 25000
After restarting PyCharm, you will be able to see functions from the UE API in the autocomplete menu.
VSCode
Navigate to Settings > Extension > Python and find Auto Complete: Extra Paths. Click the link to open the settings.json file, and add the path to your stub file under python.autoComplete.extraPaths.
After restarting Visual Studio Code (VSCode), you should now be able to see functions from the UE API in the autocomplete menu.
Type Hinting
The Python plugin can now generate the stub with type hinting (for more information on type hinting, see PEP 484). Type hints appear in your Python IDE auto-completion menu. Type hints can be configured by first clicking on Edit > Editor Preferences in the Unreal Editor Menu Bar. This will open the Editor Preferences tab. Now navigate to Plugins > Python to see the available Python Script Plugin user settings. To use Type Hinting, Developer Mode must be enabled. Below is a table with the available Type Hinting Modes and descriptions.
| Type Hinting Mode | Description |
|---|---|
| Auto-Completion | Hints the exact parameters and return type or types of a method. |
| Type Checker | Adds up all possible type coercions. For example, it will hint that you can pass a Python string in place of an unreal.Name. This makes the auto-completion menu busy and harder to read, though this option will work better if you turn on type checking in your IDE. |
| Off | Turns off type hinting altogether. |
By default, the Type Hinting Mode is set to Auto-Completion.
Note that hinting is not perfect. In some cases, types are not known when generating the stub. In other cases, the C++ reflection API does not provide enough information to accurately hint when a parameter or the return value of a method can be None.
The stub file is regenerated each time the editor is started. As a result, you can restart the editor after exposing new functions to Python or enabling new plugins to ensure the stub file is up to date.