better-mui-menu

better-mui-menu is a lightweight drop-in for Material UI that keeps a normal Menu structure while adding nested menus and full keyboard accessibility so nothing breaks audits or expectations in an MUI app.

Live demo

Try it:

StackBlitz playground.

Features

• Unlimited nesting – describe every submenu with an items array and better-mui-menu renders NestedMenuItem poppers that stay synchronized with their parents.
• Keyboard accessible – arrow keys, Enter/Space, and Escape behave like desktop menus, while focus management and ARIA attributes make the tree readable by assistive tech.
• Data-driven API – you keep work in a single MenuItem[] list; leaves, dividers, and nested branches all live alongside each other.

Installation

npm install better-mui-menu

Since the component renders Material UI primitives, also install the peer dependencies:

npm install @mui/material @emotion/react @emotion/styled @mui/icons-material

The @mui/icons-material peer is optional unless you use startIcon/endIcon helpers but we list it so consumers don’t need extra typings setup.

Usage

import { useState } from 'react'
import Button from '@mui/material/Button'
import Cloud from '@mui/icons-material/Cloud'
import Save from '@mui/icons-material/Save'
import { Menu, type MenuItem } from 'better-mui-menu'

const menuItems: MenuItem[] = [
  {
    id: 'save',
    label: 'Save',
    startIcon: Save,
    onClick: () => console.log('Save action'),
  },
  { type: 'divider' },
  {
    label: 'Cloud actions',
    startIcon: Cloud,
    items: [
      { label: 'Upload', onClick: () => console.log('Upload') },
      { label: 'Download', onClick: () => console.log('Download') },
    ],
  },
]

export function FileMenu() {
  const [anchorEl, setAnchorEl] = useState<null | HTMLElement>(null)

  return (
    <>
      <Button variant="contained" onClick={event => setAnchorEl(event.currentTarget)}>
        Open file menu
      </Button>
      <Menu
        anchorEl={anchorEl}
        open={Boolean(anchorEl)}
        onClose={() => setAnchorEl(null)}
        items={menuItems}
      />
    </>
  )
}

Items shape

MenuItem extends @mui/material/MenuItemProps (excluding children) so you can still pass dense, disabled, divider, aria-selected, etc. The better-mui-menu shape adds:

• type?: 'item' | 'divider' – render a Divider when 'divider' is supplied.
• id?: string – optional stable ID for ARIA attributes; one is generated automatically otherwise.
• label: ReactNode – the label shown in the menu row.
• startIcon / endIcon – pass any SvgIconComponent to display icons consistently with Material UI.
• items?: MenuItem[] – nested entries that render as submenus.
• onClick?: MenuItemProps['onClick'] – leaves bubble clicks and close the menu stack so the consumer can handle the action.

Accessibility & interactions

• Nested menus render in Popper instances positioned right-start from the trigger and fade in/out with a shared transition helper.
• Hover keeps a submenu open while the mouse moves between trigger and popper; leaving the area closes the branch.
• Keyboard navigation covers ArrowUp/ArrowDown through siblings, ArrowRight or Enter/Space to open children, ArrowLeft to back out, and Escape to dismiss every layer.
• ARIA helpers (aria-haspopup, aria-controls, aria-expanded, aria-labelledby) are wired automatically so assistive tech understands the structure.

Development

The library lives inside package/better-mui-menu.

• npm run dev – rebuilds src into dist with tsup --watch.
• npm run build – creates production bundles ready for publication.
• npm run test – runs the Jest suite located at src/**/*.test.{ts,tsx}.
• npm run test:coverage – runs tests with coverage and writes reports to coverage/.

From the repository root you can use npm run dev:lib and npm run dev:demo together so the demo app consumes the rebuilt workspace link. Keep npm run dev (or npm run build) running before refreshing the demo because the Vite app imports the package via file:.