How to disable (hide) UI elements without disabling them

Sorry for being a necromancer, but I have my own solution that might help you. Instead of disabling the canvas, I shrink it to a tiny object that is not visible when needed, then scale it up when necessary.

 

For hiding the whole canvas while keeping all functions, I am changing Target Display on the canvas component

 

yourUI.transform.localScale = new Vector3 (0,0,0);

 

I know is old, but I ran into this as well. you can just disable the canvas component and all UI below it stop being visible. was this not an option before? is this a new option?

 

For people still wondering, the solution is using a CanvasGroup:

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.ugui@1.0/manual/class-CanvasGroup.html

Turn alpha to 0,untick interactable and blocks raycast when disabling and do the opposite to reenable

 

Thank you very much neviovalsa. Works great.