HUD Layouts

Starting to think about getting some custom HUD layouts in addition to my default one. Is there a macro that can switch to any of the 4 layouts (less cumbersome than multi-clicking)?

Yes, /hudlayout X where X of course is a number from 1 to 4.
Works awesome.

Tnx... this is going to be interesting (although I'm running short of button blanks!).

If you are running out of hotbar buttons, it's time to get into using macros to switch out hotbars with other hotbars on the fly. Like one of my hotbars has a macro that switches to hudlayout 1 and at the same time replaces this hotbar with one that has the macro to switch to hudlayout 2 and replace this hotbar with the original one.

But wouldn’t that mean you’d have to use 2 hotbars to save that one button slot instead of one hot bar?

Give that you get ten hotbars per class and ten hotbars per job plus the ten shared hotbars, I have yet to run out of hotbars. The HUD flipper is also part of my main menu bar, and I sacrificed a third bar to it.
My other fold out bars replace more than one of it's slot at the time.

At seven hotbars I have however run out of convenient button combos to address more slots, so the remaining three hotbars are actually storing the copy in hotbars. According to my hotbar design spreadsheet, I have more than half of all hotbars 5, 6 and 7 still available for use. Not to mention 4 and 9, 8, 10 which are almost completely unused.

I must be missing something, I have 10 hot bars (plus a pet one) and that is it, have 7 shared and 3 not (changeable for different jobs). What am I missing?

You are missing the settings for using the shared hotbars or not. They are under character config and you can flip them between shared or not, or even use macros to flip. (In the lower right of the macros window is a button calling up a all available text commands and what their various options do).

You get 10 shared hotbars, 20x10 fighting job hotbars, 8x10 class hotbars, 8x10 crafter job hotbars and 3x10 gatherer job hotbars for a total of 400 hotbars (after you unlocked the jobs and classes of course)
At 12 slots per bar, that's a total of 4800 slots.

The default settings are 3 individual and 7 shared, but you can change that anyway you like). You can also easily use macros to copy hotbars to other hotbars. Or only change specific slots of a hotbar. Also shared is just a name. Even when you are using the individual hotbar 1, shared exists in the background and can be made use of.

So, my self-build menu (switch jobs, sounds on/of, HUD switch, other things) makes use of the shared hotbars 8-10, but what's displayed on them is actually stored in the individual hotbars 5-7 across several jobs and gets copied to my shared menu hotbars (I could have used the individual 8-10 hotbars but prefer it the way I currently use).

For example I have a button on my main menu that when hit copies Arcanist 5 to shared 8. The slots of Arcanist 5 are filled with macros to change jobs (switch to specific gear set, job fitting minion and job fitting mount, set up pvp menus, set up controller menus) and then copy black mage 6 to shared 8 which contains common things I use for fighting contents (hello and good bye macro für example).

For crafting jobs it instead copies over hotbars which have my favorite recipes and other things I need for crafting. Gathering jobs in contrast switch to a hotbar with macros for gathering item alarms and co.

In addition there are the crosshotbars meant for controller, same principle just that you only get 8 per job/class (but more slots per crossbar, 320 hotbars total, 5120 slots) and you can only display two of them at the same time. But they can be of use even if you aren't using a controller, because you can use merely for display (of command timers for example) or use the mouse to click on them.

You also get 21x10 pvp hotbars and 21x8 pvp crosshotbars only available in the Wolf's Den and during pvp.

But hotbars can only be copied within their categories (pvp only to pvp Cross only to cross)

There are many things you can do with the game's macro system, HUD layout and hotbars.
You'll see people with all ten hotbars displayed in various shapes and sizes at the same time plus the two crosshotbars you can display, you'll see people that are displaying one hotbar that folds out five more of them on demand. You'll see people not showing any hotbars, because as long as you know the button combos for each slot, the hotbars are going to react even when they aren't being displayed.

It's all question of finding the settings most comfortable to you.

I am aware of choosing specific hotbars to be shared or not in Char. Config/HotBars/Sharing. The HUD Layout only shows me 10 hotbars in total. Where do I get those 20 job specific hotbars (assuming I am keeping the 7 shared)?

Tried looking at cross hotbars. but they seem to always come with various labels and I see no way to turn those off (tried all the options).

The extra hotbars won't display. They take the space of the existing ones on screen, but keep the info stored in them. You can see them and easily edit them, if you turn shared off, the job specific hotbars will than be in place of shared. So, if you keep the seven as shared, you can't see the specific ones, but you can make use of them.