How to change UI in garage to garage

G2G is a mode I like to just chill in, listen to some music and drive around in the cockpit camera. But, by default the speedometer is set to be hidden in G2G, and no in game UI changes can fix that. Even opening the UI editor in the scenario with ALT + SHIFT + U changes nothing. So, if you want to change UI apps, you've got to find the file that holds the default UI for it, and edit that directly.

To just make the speedometer visible in driver cam, it's a fairly easy change. I found the file in my steam installation, under a json file named "garage.flow" at the address below "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\BeamNG.drive\gameplay\missionTypes\garageToGarage"
Once opening this file, there's a lot more than just the UI, so search for "noCockpit", which will bring you to the right area. You want to find the noCockpit setting, beneath an appName "tacho2". Delete the highlighted lines below, save the file, restart beamNG, and the speedometer should work!


I've not tried adding any other UI elements, but it looks like it should work the same as above, just adding in UI code, rather than removing it. If you want to add something new, it probably is best to make that UI in the UI editor, then copy the code from that into the above file. To find the various custom UI files, they're stored in "\AppData\Local\BeamNG.drive\[Latest version]\settings\ui_apps\layouts\". Opening them you can find the code for the various UI layouts you've edited, and copy that into the garage.flow file, replacing the UI code in it, and just making sure to indent properly.

There may well be better ways to do this, but I found no solutions to change the UI in G2G online, so figured I might as well share what I found fixed it in case anyone else has this problem too.