The sidebar is a

graphical control element A graphical widget (also graphical control element or control) in a graphical user interface is an element of interaction, such as a button or a scroll bar. Controls are software components that a computer user interacts with through direc ...

that displays various forms of information to the right or left side of an application window or operating system desktop. Examples of the sidebar can be seen in the

Opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libre ...

web browser,

Apache OpenOffice Apache OpenOffice (AOO) is an open-source office productivity software suite. It is one of the successor projects of OpenOffice.org and the designated successor of IBM Lotus Symphony. It is a close cousin of LibreOffice, Collabora Online an ...

LibreOffice LibreOffice () is a free and open-source office productivity software suite, a project of The Document Foundation (TDF). It was forked in 2010 from OpenOffice.org, an open-sourced version of the earlier StarOffice. The LibreOffice suite consi ...

, SoftMaker Presentations and

File Explorer File Explorer, previously known as Windows Explorer, is a file manager application that is included with releases of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 95 onwards. It provides a graphical user interface for accessing the file ...

; in each case, the app exposes various functionalities via the sidebar.

Overview

Sidebars have originated in desktop apps, which are designed for rectangular screens with longer horizontal sides. Like

toolbar The toolbar, also called a bar or standard toolbar (originally known as ribbon) is a graphical control element on which on-screen icons can be used. A toolbar often allows for quick access to functions that are commonly used in the program. Some ...

s and

status bar A status bar is a graphical control element which poses an information area typically found at the window's bottom. It can be divided into sections to group information. Its job is primarily to display information about the current state of its ...

s, sidebars host both information and

GUI widgets The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

with which the user issues commands to the app. Unlike toolbars and status bars, sidebars have larger surface areas because of horizontally longer layout of desktop apps. Sidebars may use accordions to organize widgets and accommodate a larger layout than the visible surface area.

Widgets

In a number of Widget engines, one is able to install

applet In computing, an applet is any small application that performs one specific task that runs within the scope of a dedicated widget engine or a larger program, often as a plug-in. The term is frequently used to refer to a Java applet, a program w ...

s which can reside on a sidebar. Notable examples include: *

Windows Sidebar Windows Desktop Gadgets (called Windows Sidebar in Windows Vista) is a discontinued widget engine for Microsoft Gadgets. Desktop Gadgets have been replaced by Windows 10 Taskbar Widgets. It was introduced with Windows Vista, in which it features ...

, part of

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

only * Google Desktop

Drawers

Early versions of

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

's Aqua UI supported a sidebar concept called drawers, which pop outside the application window frame rather than expand from the inside like most application sidebars, are used. Despite criticism, third-party applications like Transmit, OmniWeb, Shiira and

BBEdit BBEdit is a proprietary text editor made by Bare Bones Software, originally developed for Macintosh System Software 6, and currently supporting macOS. History The first version of BBEdit was created as a "bare bones" text editor to serve as a "p ...

quickly adopted drawers. The standard

email client An email client, email reader or, more formally, message user agent (MUA) or mail user agent is a computer program used to access and manage a user's email. A web application which provides message management, composition, and reception functio ...

, Mail, used drawers for listing mailboxes prior to 10.4 ("Tiger"), when they were replaced by a traditional sidebar. A number of other Apple-created applications and third-party applications have replaced drawers with a sidebar, or re-designed the interface to make a sidebar/drawer unnecessary. Apple's Human Interface Guidelines now recommend against their use. Formerly drawer-heavy apps, like iCal and Adium, now contain no drawers at all, and instead display an optional sidebar within the main window. The Android mobile operating system also uses the term "drawers" to refer to a type of sidebar menu widget, usually accessible by swiping from the left edge of the screen.

References

{{Graphical control elements Graphical control elements