WP menu not resembling the editor view of the menu

Some ideas:

• Are you running any other plugins that customize the admin dashboard or change role permissions? There are some plugins that can hide admin menu items even if that isn’t their primary purpose. For example, some role editing plugins can do it. If another plugin changes which menu items are visible, the real admin menu might not match what’s shown in Admin Menu Editor.
• As you guessed, certain plugins can intentionally hide their own admin menus. Could you list some of the menus that are showing up in the menu editor but not in the actual menu? If I’m familiar with the relevant plugins, I might know if they hide their menus or not.
• As a test, you could try temporarily deactivating Admin Menu Editor and/or any other plugins that might change the admin menu, and see if that makes more menus visible. This could help identify the plugin that’s hiding the menus.

Thank you very much for your fast reply, that′s quite a support chat, great! ??

ad1: no, not that I am aware of, so:
ad3: no change (apart from bringing up the items that are hidden by me in the AME)
ad2: items that are not shown in the WP menu but in the menu editor: (German expressions translated)

General, Setup master, Erweitert (=expanded), Leistung (=performance), Components, SEO, doppelte Seiten (=double pages), Schutz (=protection), Malware Scanner Firewall, License, Widgets, Bildoptimierung (=picture optimization), Hide login page

Perhaps Rank Math SEO is – amongst others – responsible?

Here a list of the plugins used on this page:
Admin Menu Editor
Advanced Editor Tools
Auto-sizes for Lazy-loaded Images
CF7 Skins for Contact Form 7
Classic Editor
Contact Form 7
Contact Form 7 Spam Killer
Embed Optimizer
Honeypot for Contact Form 7
Image Placeholders
Koko Analytics
LoginPress
MainWP Child
Mobile Menu
Modern Image Formats
NinjaFirewall (WP Edition)
Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions
Performance Lab
Rank Math SEO
Schema & Structured Data for WP & AMP
ShortPixel Image Optimizer
Speculative Loading
UpdraftPlus – Backup/Restore
Vendi Abandoned Plugin Check
Webcraftic Clearfy – WordPress optimization plugin
WP 2FA – Two-factor authentication for WordPress
WP Dashboard Notes
WP Rocket
WP YouTube Lyte
WPFront Scroll Top
WPSSO Core

Some of those items, like “General”, “Components”, “License” and so on, sound like they would usually be in a submenu (second level), not in the top/first level. And yet they’re shown in the top level in the menu editor? What are their URLs (in menu properties)? The URLs could help identify the plugin(s) that created those items.

I tried installing Rank Math SEO version 1.0.222 on a test site together with Admin Menu Editor and it didn’t seem to cause any issues, at least not with the default settings. So I would guess that it’s not responsible.

I don’t see anything immediately suspicious in the plugin list, but it also contains multiple plugins that I’m not familiar with. It’s still not possible to rule out the possibility that one of them conflicts with AME.

Hello Janis,
your asking for the URLs was the right direction, the (only) plugin responsible for this mess is the Clearfy plugin, a widespread one to enhance the performance. I deactivated it and the items are vanished.

If I now tried the laborious task to move each item into the second level (unfortunately no way to mark multiple items at once in AME), this work would be destroyed in the next update of the plugin, I am sure.
So I will leave it as it is, seems, not many AME + Clearfy users are disturbed by this and it is only a minor error. …And a bit tired to report all that again in the Clearfy support page… perhaps another day… ??

But good that at least we know more now… ?? Thanks!