Sidebar Component

Overview

Sidebar holds destinations, nested groups, badges, and workspace controls in a side panel that collapses to an icon-only rail. The active highlight slides to each new destination, badge counts roll, collapsed tooltips settle elastically, and the panel can be resized on desktop or slid in on mobile.

Use it when an app has several destinations users move between all day, such as project tools, developer consoles, CMSs, and admin panels. Animation should reinforce where users are, not make navigation harder to follow.

Theme and Interaction Customisation

Set primary or muted active colours, item roundness, and a bar, dot, or no indicator, plus a header with team switcher, breadcrumbs, and search. Optional effects include sliding highlights, press feedback, rolling text, elastic tooltips, rolling badges, a rotating toggle icon, and a subtle page-scale transition.

Example Production Use Case

A project management platform can keep Inbox, Calendar, and nested project groups in the sidebar. Users collapse it to an icon rail on a dense board, and tooltips identify each icon.

A multi-team SaaS app can use the header’s team switcher, so switching teams updates the workspace name and icon while the active highlight stays clear.

A developer tool can let engineers widen the panel for long service names, while unread incident counts roll on their badges as they change.

Best Used For

• SaaS dashboards.
• Project management platforms.
• Admin panels.
• Developer tools alongside editors or monitoring views.
• Content management systems.
• Multi-team applications with workspace switching.
• Productivity tools where focus mode needs more space.

Not For

Marketing sites, landing pages, and portfolios with a few links are better served by a header or compact menu. Mobile-first products with few destinations may suit bottom navigation more.

It can’t fix weak information architecture, since deep nesting and vague labels stay hard to navigate.

Don’t enable every micro-interaction at once. Each effect should communicate state, not compete for attention.

Performance Budget

Use lightweight transitions for collapse, highlights, and tooltips, avoid heavy layout work while resizing, and let the latest route win. Only roll badges when values change, keep nested updates local, and keep page-scale transitions subtle.

Accessibility and Mobile

Use navigation landmarks, labelled toggle and group controls, current-page state, and accessible names for icon-only items. The ⌘B or Ctrl+B shortcut should support a visible control, and resizing needs a non-drag alternative. On mobile, use a slide-in panel with clear open and close controls and proper focus handling, and with reduced motion simplify highlights, tooltips, badges, and page transitions.

Common Mistakes

• Relying on animation to show the active destination.
• Hiding labels without accessible names.
• Using elastic tooltips or edge resizing outside their supported modes.
• Rolling non-numeric badges.
• Allowing unlimited sidebar width.
• Losing the parent context of nested destinations.
• Shortcuts that clash with key app commands.
• Overanimating navigation.
• Treating desktop collapse and mobile overlay the same way.