How to move Menus customizer section directly under Site Identity?

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 );