How to move Menus customizer section directly under Site Identity?

Question

Is it possible to change the priority of the Menus customizer section so that it is directly under the Site Identity section?

Answer 1

Update: I was curious and just searched this site for get_panel method and that seems to be the way to get and modify the panel instance. E.g. this question "How to access the nav_menus panel with the customizer api?" seems related. There @WestonRuter does change the priority of the Menus panel, but without applying add_panel() and using the $wp_customize instance as the input parameter in the customize_register callback. I just checked and it's in fact passed on, because of do_action( 'customize_register', $this ); in WP_Customize_Manager::wp_loaded(). Previously I had looked at:

add_action( 'customize_register', array( $this, 'register_controls' ) );

where:

/**
 * Register some default controls.
 *
 * @since 3.4.0
 */
 public function register_controls() {

had no input parameter.

I've therefore adjusted the answer below by removing the add_panel() and by using the $wp_customize as input parameter for the customize_register callback, instead of function() use ( &$wp_customize ).

---

I dug through the Customizer classes and tested various things. This approach seems to work:

/**
 * Change priority and title for the 'Menus' panel in the Customizer
 */
add_action( 'customize_register', function( \WP_Customize_Manager $wp_customize )
{
    // Get the 'Menus' panel instance
    $mypanel = $wp_customize->get_panel( 'nav_menus');

    if( $mypanel instanceof \WP_Customize_Nav_Menus_Panel )
    {
        // Adjust to your needs:
        $mypanel ->priority = 21;    
        $mypanel ->title    = 'My Great Menus!';
    }

}, 12 );

but I've no idea how people do this in general or if it's the way to go ;-)

We use the priority of 21 here, since the Site Identity section has priority of 20.

In our case we have a panel, not section, but within the WP_Customize_Manager::prepare_controls() the sections and panels are combined and ordered by priority via usort and WP_Customize_Manager::_cmp_priority().

Here we can see the changes:

Before:

After:

We can make this more dynamic, by fetching the priority of the Site Identity section:

/**
 * Change priority and title for the 'Menus' panel in the Customizer
 */
add_action( 'customize_register', function( \WP_Customize_Manager $wp_customize )
{
    // Get the 'Menus' panel instance
    $mypanel   = $wp_customize->get_panel( 'nav_menus' );

    // Get the 'Site Identity' section instance
    $mysection = $wp_customize->get_section( 'title_tagline' );

    if( 
            $mypanel instanceof \WP_Customize_Nav_Menus_Panel 
        &&  $mysection instanceof \WP_Customize_Section
    ) {
        // Adjust to your needs
        $mypanel->priority = $mysection->priority + 1;
        $mypanel->title    = 'My Great Menus!';    
    }

}, 12 );