FiveM HUD Scripts Troubleshooting FAQ: 12 Common Issues Fixed

HUD scripts are the most visible resource on a FiveM server. When an inventory script misbehaves, a handful of players notice. When the HUD fails, everyone sees it within seconds — and they open a ticket immediately.

This guide walks through the twelve HUD failure modes that appear most often on ESX, QBCore, and QBox servers. Each section covers how to diagnose the issue, the fix that solves it 90% of the time, and the trap that causes the remaining 10%.

Quick Diagnosis Table

Before working through individual issues, match the symptom you see to the most likely root cause. Almost every HUD bug falls into one of these buckets.

Symptom	Most likely cause	First thing to check
HUD completely invisible	NUI load failure	F8 console for Could not find resource ui page
HUD visible but all values empty/zero	Framework mismatch	Which framework the HUD was built for
HUD values updating slowly	Polling interval too long	Search for Wait( in client.lua
HUD disappears on vehicle enter/exit	Broken event listener	IsPedInAnyVehicle usage in HUD code
Minimap gone	HUD hides the default radar	DisplayRadar calls in HUD
FPS drops near menus	NUI focus conflict	SetNuiFocus calls across scripts
HUD off-screen or wrong size	Hardcoded px positions	CSS uses px instead of vw/vh
Keybind does nothing	Command not registered	RegisterKeyMapping in fxmanifest
HUD works offline, fails on server	fx_version / game mismatch	fx_version in fxmanifest.lua

Use this table as a triage filter. Once you've narrowed to a bucket, jump to the section below.

1. HUD Invisible or Not Showing

The most common HUD failure is the entire interface failing to render. This is almost always a NUI problem, not a Lua problem — which is why it's invisible rather than throwing obvious script errors.

Open the F8 console and search for any of these patterns:

Could not find resource ui page
NUI: failed to load
SCRIPT ERROR: @your-hud/client.lua:XX
Error loading script web/dist/index.html

Fix checklist, in order:

1. Confirm the HUD resource contains a built UI directory (ui/, web/dist/, or similar). Modern HUDs built with a JS framework need a build step — running npm install && npm run build inside the resource folder is not optional.
2. Check fxmanifest.lua has the correct ui_page path pointing to the built index.html, not the source file.
3. Verify the resource starts after your framework in server.cfg. A HUD that loads before QBCore will fail to fetch player data.
4. Check resource ordering for dependencies — some HUDs depend on ox_lib or qb-core being ensure-ed first.

If the HUD worked previously and just stopped, the most likely change is a framework update that renamed an event or export the HUD listens to. Roll the framework back, or check the HUD's release notes.

2. Minimap Not Displaying Correctly

Custom HUDs almost always hide the default GTA minimap and render their own styled version. If the minimap disappears entirely after installing a new HUD, the HUD is calling DisplayRadar(false) without providing a replacement.

To confirm:

-- Drop into client.lua or a debug resource
DisplayRadar(true)

If the minimap returns, the HUD is the cause. Two fixes:

• Enable the HUD's custom minimap — most HUDs have a config option like Config.CustomMinimap = true that must be flipped on.
• Disable the radar hide — open the HUD's client.lua, find DisplayRadar(false), and comment it out if you prefer the default.

Some HUDs also reposition the default minimap. If yours is visible but in the wrong corner, look for SetMinimapComponentPosition calls.

3. Speedometer Not Working

Speedometers rely on GetEntitySpeed(), a client-side native that returns raw meters per second. If the speedometer shows zero even while driving, debug the underlying value before blaming the HUD:

Citizen.CreateThread(function()
    while true do
        local ped = PlayerPedId()
        local veh = GetVehiclePedIsIn(ped, false)
        if veh ~= 0 then
            local mps = GetEntitySpeed(veh)
            local kmh = mps * 3.6
            local mph = mps * 2.237
            print(('Speed: %.1f m/s | %.1f km/h | %.1f mph'):format(mps, kmh, mph))
        end
        Wait(500)
    end
end)

If this prints correct values but the HUD doesn't update, the bug is in the NUI bridge — the Lua side reads speed correctly but fails to send it to the HTML via SendNUIMessage. Open the F8 NUI devtools (nui_devtools), watch the message stream, and verify the HUD is actually receiving updates.

If the Lua side prints zeroes while driving, the issue is a broken GetVehiclePedIsIn check. Some HUDs cache the vehicle handle once and never update it.

4. Health and Armor Bars Wrong

Incorrect health and armor come from polling intervals that are too slow, or from the HUD reading cached values instead of native calls.

The sweet spot is 200–500ms polling. Slower than that misses rapid changes in combat. Faster than that — especially every-frame reads — destroys FPS because each read triggers a NUI message and a DOM update.

Citizen.CreateThread(function()
    while true do
        Wait(250) -- the sweet spot
        local ped = PlayerPedId()
        SendNUIMessage({
            type = 'stats',
            health = GetEntityHealth(ped) - 100, -- FiveM health baseline is 100
            armor = GetPedArmour(ped)
        })
    end
end)

Note the - 100 — FiveM health natives return 100–200, not 0–100. If the HUD shows health starting at 100% when you're at full health, the HUD is dividing by 200 instead of subtracting the baseline.

5. Status Indicators Not Updating (Hunger/Thirst)

Hunger and thirst depend entirely on the framework's needs system. This is the single most common cause of HUD failures across the community — users install a QBCore HUD on an ESX server (or vice versa) and everything except status works, because the framework-specific events never fire.

-- QBCore pattern
RegisterNetEvent('QBCore:Player:Data', function(PlayerData)
    SendNUIMessage({
        type = 'needs',
        hunger = PlayerData.metadata.hunger,
        thirst = PlayerData.metadata.thirst
    })
end)

-- ESX pattern
TriggerEvent('esx_status:getStatus', 'hunger', function(status)
    SendNUIMessage({ type = 'needs', hunger = status.getPercent() })
end)

If your framework is QBox, the QBCore pattern works unchanged — QBox is event-compatible with QBCore on the needs surface. Before blaming the HUD, confirm which framework's events it listens to.

6. HUD Conflicting With Other UI

When the HUD blocks interaction with inventory, phone, or menu scripts, the culprit is almost always NUI focus. Only one NUI frame should capture mouse input at a time, and SetNuiFocus(true, true) is what captures it.

Audit the HUD's client.lua:

grep -n "SetNuiFocus" client.lua

A passive, display-only HUD should never call SetNuiFocus(true, true). Interactive HUDs (settings menus, emote wheels) should only hold focus while the menu is open and release it on close.

If the HUD is grabbing focus legitimately but never releasing it, look for missing SetNuiFocus(false, false) calls in the close handler.

7. HUD Causing FPS Drops

High-frequency DOM manipulation is the number one cause of HUD-related FPS drops. Every time the HUD updates a value, the browser engine recalculates layout and repaints. If this happens every frame (~16ms), performance suffers even on powerful clients.

Performance budget for a modern HUD:

Metric	Budget	Notes
Poll interval	≥200ms	Faster than 100ms is almost always wasted
DOM elements	<100	Deep trees are slow to repaint
CSS box-shadow	Static only	Never on animated elements
CSS filter: blur	Static only	Same — very expensive on every repaint
Animation properties	transform, opacity only	These skip layout
NUI messages/sec	<20	Batch multiple values into one message

Move your biggest offenders first. Swapping a left: 200px animation for transform: translateX(200px) can recover 10–20 FPS on mid-range clients.

8. NUI Errors in Console

NUI errors in the F8 console mean the HUD's web interface failed. The most common cause is a missing build step — modern HUDs shipping with a React or Vue frontend require npm run build inside the resource folder before first start.

Check fxmanifest.lua:

fx_version 'cerulean'
game 'gta5'

ui_page 'web/dist/index.html' -- this file must actually exist

files {
    'web/dist/**/*'
}

If web/dist/index.html doesn't exist, no UI will load. Run the HUD's documented build command, then restart the resource.

9. Keybind Toggle Not Working

If pressing the HUD toggle key does nothing, isolate whether the command fires at all:

RegisterCommand('togglehud', function()
    print('HUD toggle triggered')
end, false)
RegisterKeyMapping('togglehud', 'Toggle HUD', 'keyboard', 'F7')

Restart the resource, press F7, and watch F8. If the print fires, the command is registered correctly and the bug is in the HUD's message-send side. If the print does not fire, another script already registered the same command name, or the HUD's fxmanifest is missing the keybind entirely.

Check /resmon for duplicate command registrations, or search all scripts for RegisterKeyMapping collisions.

10. HUD Positioned Wrong

Hardcoded pixel positions break across different monitor sizes. A HUD designed at 1920×1080 will render off-screen or cluster into one corner on 2560×1440 or ultrawide displays.

/* Bad: breaks on non-1080p */
.hud-container {
  left: 20px;
  bottom: 200px;
  width: 400px;
}

/* Good: scales to any resolution */
.hud-container {
  left: 1.5vw;
  bottom: 12vh;
  width: 25vw;
}

Viewport-relative units (vw, vh) scale with the client's resolution automatically. Percentage-based widths scale with the parent container. Both are drop-in replacements for px in 95% of HUD layouts.

11. HUD Not Scaling on Different Resolutions

Closely related to positioning — the same root cause produces both symptoms. Fixed-pixel fonts and element sizes crush readability on low-resolution clients and look oversized on 4K.

A well-built HUD uses clamp() to set reasonable min/max bounds:

.hud-speedometer {
  font-size: clamp(14px, 1.5vw, 22px);
}

This stays between 14px and 22px regardless of viewport size. If the HUD you're troubleshooting ships with a resolution or scale config option, set it explicitly rather than leaving it on auto.

12. Framework Integration Errors

If the HUD throws errors about missing exports (attempt to call a nil value (field 'PlayerData'), No such export 'GetCoreObject'), it's incompatible with your framework version.

Check three things, in order:

1. Framework compatibility declared by the HUD. Most HUD scripts are QBCore-only, ESX-only, or ship with separate builds per framework. Using a QBCore HUD on an ESX server is not a fixable misconfiguration — it requires a full rewrite of the HUD's framework bridge.
2. Framework version. QBCore had a major breaking change between v1.2 and v2.0 around player data exports. A HUD built for v1.2 will error on v2.0 without code changes.
3. Dependencies. Many modern HUDs require ox_lib or qb-core to be ensure-ed before the HUD resource. Check the HUD's README for a required resources list.

When in doubt, install the HUD on a clean staging server with only the framework and its direct dependencies. If it works there and fails on your live server, something in your resource stack is the cause.

Recommended Scripts

When you need a HUD that just works — performance-tested, framework-native, documented — the VertexMods catalog is a good starting point:

• FiveM HUD Scripts — Premium and free HUD resources, filterable by framework
• Best FiveM Scripts 2026 — Top-rated scripts across all categories
• FiveM Troubleshooting Guide — The broader troubleshooting playbook
• FiveM Error Codes Fixes — Decoding every common error message