NO BUG: Nested Dropdown breaks "Toggle on: Hover" on parent when Multilevel is enabled

philipp · August 26, 2026, 11:06am

When a top-level Dropdown inside a Nav (Nestable) has “Enable Multilevel” turned on and contains a nested Dropdown element as one of its children, the parent dropdown no longer opens on hover — even though “Toggle on” is set to “Hover”. It appears to fall back to click-only behavior once Enable Multileven is activated, regardless of the Hover setting.

Steps to reproduce:

Add a Nav (Nestable) element.
Add a top-level Dropdown item. Enable “Multilevel”, set “Toggle on” to “Hover”.
Inside that dropdown’s content, add a second (nested) Dropdown element with a few Text Links inside, also with Multilevel enabled / or turned of (doesnt matter).
View the page on a desktop breakpoint and hover over the top-level nav item.

Expected behavior:
The top-level dropdown opens on hover, same as a Multilevel dropdown without a nested Dropdown child.

Actual behavior:
Hovering does nothing — the dropdown only opens via click, as if “Toggle on: Hover” were not applied. Deactivating “Enable Multilevel restores normal hover behavior.

Json for Quick Check:

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timmse · August 26, 2026, 11:30am

Hi Philipp,
Thanks for your report.

However, this is not a bug, especially since the description text for the multilevel toggle explains the expected behavior:

Show only active dropdown. Toggle on click. Inner dropdowns inherit multilevel.

philipp · August 26, 2026, 11:32am

Thanks for the quick reply, Stefan. I have read the text, but I assumed this was refering to the actual nested dropdown (second hierarchy), and that would be fine.

So that means I cannot have a Link on my Top Level Dropdown with Multilevel enabled? This seems to be a limitiation that feels wrong.

philipp · August 26, 2026, 11:35am

Okay just tested it, I can still put a link on there and this works for keyboard navigation by tabbing thhrough. however for mouse navigation this is really strange, I need to aim for the little dropdown icon and hopefully not click on the top level dropdown link. This feels wrong.

I think you folks should enable click on hover for multilevel dropdowns.

philipp · August 26, 2026, 11:40am

One more point that strengthen my argument:
Having a Link on my top level domain and clicking it, the dropdown is also opening before the new page appears. So Dropdown flickering. That cant be intentional.

timmse · August 26, 2026, 11:43am

That is the current tradeoff with Multilevel enabled.

The parent item can still have a link, but the dropdown interaction switches to the multilevel click model. That means mouse users need a separate click target for opening the dropdown instead of the whole parent behaving like a normal hover dropdown/link.

If that interaction is not suitable for this navigation, the cleaner setup is to separate the linked top-level item from the multilevel dropdown trigger, or disable Multilevel for that item and use a structure where the parent can behave as a regular hover dropdown.

The flicker is a side effect of the same interaction model: with Multilevel enabled, the dropdown trigger uses click-based handling, so clicking the parent can briefly toggle the dropdown before the browser follows the link.

Once again, the cleaner setup is to separate the linked top-level item from the Multilevel dropdown trigger, or disable Multilevel for that item if it needs to behave like a regular hover dropdown/link.

philipp · August 26, 2026, 11:57am

Thanks for the explanation, I understand the tradeoff now. I will try to find a solution with your suggestion and sepearte the linked top level item from the multilevel dropdown.