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Troubleshooting

Where to look first

  • Papyrus log — Documents/My Games/Skyrim Special Edition/Logs/Script/Papyrus.0.log
  • SL Widgets user log — Documents/My Games/Skyrim Special Edition/Logs/Script/User/slwidgets.0.log
  • MCM Debug page — shows exactly which of SL Widgets' dependencies were found and whether iWant Status Bars is ready

Icons not appearing at all

MCM → General → Enable/Disable Mod must be toggled on.

MCM → Debug → Dependency Check should show iWant Status Bars as OK. If not, confirm iWant Status Bars and iWant Widgets are installed and active, and that load order is iwidgets → ibars → slwidgets.

If you have both the LE and SE versions of iWant Widgets installed you will have two iWidgets.esp files. Keep only one. SL Widgets will not initialise correctly with duplicates.

MCM → Debug → check the mod whose icons you expect. If it shows Not Found, the plugin is not loaded or its filename doesn't match. Check that the ESP/ESM is enabled in your load order.

Icons overlapping or in the wrong bar

This happens on heavy script-load mod lists where iWant Bar events fire out of order.

Fix: Disable the mod (MCM → General), save, reload (or fast-travel and back), re-enable.

If NPC icons are appearing in the player bar, press Reset NPC bar layout on the NPC Tracking page. This forces a reconciliation pass that moves NPC icons to their dedicated bars.

NPC labels not appearing

  1. Confirm the Pick Hotkey is bound (MCM → NPC Tracking → Pick Hotkey shows a key name, not blank).
  2. Confirm the NPC is loaded — they must be in the same cell and have 3D geometry (alive, not deleted, within load radius).
  3. Confirm the mod is not disabled.
  4. After a game load, labels are recreated automatically when iWant Status Bars fires its ready event. Wait a few seconds on the first load.

NPC slot not assigning

The hotkey is silently blocked when:

  • Any menu is open (MCM, inventory, dialogue, map, loading screen)
  • The crosshair is not targeting an actor
  • The crosshair is targeting the player
  • All three NPC slots are already full
  • The mod is globally disabled

If you press the hotkey and nothing happens, check each of these conditions.

A mod I have installed isn't being detected

  1. MCM → Debug → check the dependency list. If it shows Not Found:
  2. Verify the ESP/ESM filename exactly matches what SL Widgets expects (see Supported Mods for the exact filenames).
  3. Confirm the plugin is enabled in your load order.
  4. If you installed the mod during the current session, press Reset Modules on the Debug page to recheck all dependencies without restarting the game.

Icons are there but never change

  • Confirm the dependent mod is actually running (not just installed). For example, SLA won't report values until SexLab itself is initialised.
  • Check the Update Interval (MCM → General). At 60 seconds, an icon update takes up to a minute to reflect.
  • For MAL (Mammaries and Lactation), values are one tick behind by design — this is normal.

Settings preset won't save / load

  • PapyrusUtil must be installed and working. Check your Papyrus log for PapyrusUtil errors.
  • Preset files are written to Data/SKSE/Plugins/SlWidgets/SettingsPresets/. Confirm the folder exists and is writable (mod manager virtual filesystem sometimes blocks writes to this path — try running via MO2 rather than Vortex if this occurs, or configure Vortex to allow writes to SKSE plugin data).

Still stuck?

Collect the following before reporting an issue:

  • Your Papyrus log (Papyrus.0.log)
  • The SL Widgets user log (slwidgets.0.log)
  • A screenshot of MCM → Debug showing the dependency check results
  • Your load order (use a tool like LOOT or the SSEEdit plugin list)