
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 direct m ...
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 History of theatre#European theatre, Western theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by Singing, singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically ...
web browser,
Apache web OpenOffice,
LibreOffice
LibreOffice () is a free and open-source office productivity software suite developed by The Document Foundation (TDF). It was created in 2010 as a fork of OpenOffice.org, itself a successor to StarOffice. The suite includes applications ...
,
SoftMaker Presentations and File Explorer; 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 (computing), window's bottom.
It can be divided into sections to group information. Its job is primarily to display information about the c ...
s, sidebars host both information and
GUI widgets 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 ...
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, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...
only
*
Google Desktop
Drawers

Early versions of
Mac OS X
macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...
'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
Shiira (シイラ, Japanese for the common dolphin-fish) is a discontinued open source web browser for the Mac OS X operating system. According to its lead developer Makoto Kinoshita, the goal of Shiira was "to create a browser that is better ...
and
BBEdit
BBEdit is a Proprietary software, proprietary text editor made by Bare Bones Software, originally developed for Macintosh System 6, System Software 6, and currently supporting macOS.
History
The first version of BBEdit was created as a "bare bon ...
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
Human interface guidelines (HIG) are software development documents which offer application developers a set of recommendations. Their aim is to improve the experience for the users by making application interfaces more intuitive, learnable, and ...
now recommend against their use. Formerly drawer-heavy apps, like
iCal
Calendar is a personal calendar app made by Apple Inc. for its macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS and visionOS operating systems. It offers online cloud backup of calendars using Apple's iCloud service, or can synchronize with other calendar service ...
and
Adium
Adium is a free software, free and Open-source software, open-source instant messaging client (computing), client for macOS that supports multiple IM networks, including XMPP (Jabber), IRC and more. In the past, it has also supported AOL Instant ...
, 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