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 dir ...

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 libr ...

web browser, Apache OpenOffice, LibreOffice,

SoftMaker Presentations SoftMaker Presentations is a presentation program compatible with Microsoft PowerPoint. It is part of the SoftMaker Office productivity suite but also released as registerware. SoftMaker Presentations is available for Microsoft Windows, ma ...

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 toolbars and status bars, 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, 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 lap ...

'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 Transmit is a file transfer client program for macOS. Developed by Panic, Transmit is shareware. After a seven-day trial period, the product can only be used for seven-minute sessions until it has been purchased. Originally built as an FTP clien ...

, OmniWeb, Shiira and BBEdit 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