Outdated group nodes tips

The next tip I'm going to give you concerns Group nodes. They are confusingly named, as they are different from Groups. Group nodes have some UX issues, but thankfully they will soon be replaced with Subgraphs (currently in open testing). Group nodes will be converted to subgraphs when subgraphs are released, so you don't have to worry about wasting effort.

You can use group nodes to compact multiple nodes into one, and once you've created a group node, you can hide settings that you never use. This is very useful to declutter your workflow.

In order to create a group node, you select the nodes you want to combine with CTRL+drag click, then you right click your ComfyUI canvas and select "Convert to Group Node". (You can convert a group node back to individual nodes by right-clicking it and selecting "Convert to nodes.")

Please note that you cannot include a cg-use-everywhere node inside a group node (it won't work), and Kijai's Get/Set nodes also have poor compatibility with group nodes.

Once you've created a group node, you can hide the inputs/widgets/outputs that you don't want to see by right-clicking it and selecting "Manage Group Node". Note that this menu can be janky sometimes, for example you have to re-hide everything whenever you ungroup your nodes and group them back.

Note also the following jank:

• Custom nodepacks used ONLY inside group nodes (and nowhere outside of them) will not be picked up by ComfyUI-Manager's missing custom nodes detector. If you want other people to be able to have missing nodes detected, you'll have to tuck in the custom nodes somewhere outside group nodes. (They do not need to be connected to anything.)
• When loading a workflow with missing nodes inside its group nodes, the group nodes will become corrupted, and after installing the missing nodes, you will need to delete the workflow and import it again.

I hope subgraphs come quickly and save us from all this jank.

With all this said, here's what the workflow looks like using group nodes: