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Sidebar

Creating a sidebar is useful to:

  • Group multiple related documents
  • Display a sidebar on each of those documents
  • Provide paginated navigation, with next/previous button

To use sidebars on your Docusaurus site:

  1. Define a sidebars file that exports a dictionary of sidebar objects.
  2. Pass its path to the @docusaurus/plugin-docs plugin directly or via @docusaurus/preset-classic.
docusaurus.config.js
export default {
  presets: [
    [
      '@docusaurus/preset-classic',
      {
        docs: {
          sidebarPath: './sidebars.js',
        },
      },
    ],
  ],
};
Node.js runtime

The sidebars file is run with Node.js. You can't use or import browsers APIs, React or JSX in it.

This section serves as an overview of miscellaneous features of the doc sidebar. In the following sections, we will more systematically introduce the following concepts:

Default sidebar​

If the sidebarPath is unspecified, Docusaurus automatically generates a sidebar for you, by using the filesystem structure of the docs folder:

sidebars.js
export default {
  mySidebar: [
    {
      type: 'autogenerated',
      dirName: '.', // generate sidebar from the docs folder (or versioned_docs/<version>)
    },
  ],
};

You can also define your sidebars explicitly.

A sidebar at its crux is a hierarchy of categories, doc links, and other hyperlinks.

type Sidebar =
  // Normal syntax
  | SidebarItem[]
  // Shorthand syntax
  | {[categoryLabel: string]: SidebarItem[]};

For example:

sidebars.js
export default {
  mySidebar: [
    {
      type: 'category',
      label: 'Getting Started',
      items: [
        {
          type: 'doc',
          id: 'doc1',
        },
      ],
    },
    {
      type: 'category',
      label: 'Docusaurus',
      items: [
        {
          type: 'doc',
          id: 'doc2',
        },
        {
          type: 'doc',
          id: 'doc3',
        },
      ],
    },
    {
      type: 'link',
      label: 'Learn more',
      href: 'https://example.com',
    },
  ],
};

This is a sidebars file that exports one sidebar, called mySidebar. It has three top-level items: two categories and one external link. Within each category, there are a few doc links.

A sidebars file can contain multiple sidebar objects, identified by their object keys.

type SidebarsFile = {
  [sidebarID: string]: Sidebar;
};

Theme configuration​

Hideable sidebar​

By enabling the themeConfig.docs.sidebar.hideable option, you can make the entire sidebar hideable, allowing users to better focus on the content. This is especially useful when content is consumed on medium-sized screens (e.g. tablets).

docusaurus.config.js
export default {
  themeConfig: {
    docs: {
      sidebar: {
        hideable: true,
      },
    },
  },
};

Auto-collapse sidebar categories​

The themeConfig.docs.sidebar.autoCollapseCategories option would collapse all sibling categories when expanding one category. This saves the user from having too many categories open and helps them focus on the selected section.

docusaurus.config.js
export default {
  themeConfig: {
    docs: {
      sidebar: {
        autoCollapseCategories: true,
      },
    },
  },
};

Passing custom props​

To pass in custom props to a sidebar item, add the optional customProps object to any of the items. This is useful to apply site customizations by swizzling React components rendering sidebar items.

{
  type: 'doc',
  id: 'doc1',
  customProps: {
    badges: ['new', 'green'],
    featured: true,
  },
};

By default, breadcrumbs are rendered at the top, using the "sidebar path" of the current page.

This behavior can be disabled with plugin options:

docusaurus.config.js
export default {
  presets: [
    [
      '@docusaurus/preset-classic',
      {
        docs: {
          breadcrumbs: false,
        },
      },
    ],
  ],
};

Complex sidebars example​

A real-world example from the Docusaurus site:

sidebars.js
import type {SidebarsConfig} from '@docusaurus/plugin-content-docs';
const sidebars: SidebarsConfig = {
  docs: [
    'introduction',
    {
      type: 'category',
      label: 'Getting Started',
      link: {
        type: 'generated-index',
      },
      collapsed: false,
      items: [
        'installation',
        'configuration',
        'playground',
        'typescript-support',
      ],
    },
    {
      type: 'category',
      label: 'Guides',
      link: {
        type: 'generated-index',
        title: 'Docusaurus Guides',
        description:
          "Let's learn about the most important Docusaurus concepts!",
        keywords: ['guides'],
        image: '/img/docusaurus.png',
      },
      items: [
        'guides/creating-pages',
        {
          type: 'category',
          label: 'Docs',
          link: {
            type: 'doc',
            id: 'guides/docs/introduction',
          },
          items: [
            'guides/docs/create-doc',
            {
              type: 'category',
              label: 'Sidebar',
              link: {
                type: 'doc',
                id: 'guides/docs/sidebar/index',
              },
              items: [
                'guides/docs/sidebar/items',
                'guides/docs/sidebar/autogenerated',
                'guides/docs/sidebar/multiple-sidebars',
              ],
            },
            'guides/docs/versioning',
            'guides/docs/multi-instance',
          ],
        },
        'blog',
        {
          type: 'category',
          label: 'Markdown Features',
          link: {
            type: 'doc',
            id: 'guides/markdown-features/introduction',
          },
          items: [
            'guides/markdown-features/react',
            'guides/markdown-features/tabs',
            'guides/markdown-features/code-blocks',
            'guides/markdown-features/admonitions',
            'guides/markdown-features/toc',
            'guides/markdown-features/assets',
            'guides/markdown-features/links',
            'guides/markdown-features/plugins',
            'guides/markdown-features/math-equations',
            'guides/markdown-features/diagrams',
            'guides/markdown-features/head-metadata',
          ],
        },
        'styling-layout',
        'swizzling',
        'static-assets',
        'search',
        'browser-support',
        'seo',
        'using-plugins',
        'deployment',
        {
          type: 'category',
          label: 'Internationalization',
          link: {type: 'doc', id: 'i18n/introduction'},
          items: [
            {
              type: 'doc',
              id: 'i18n/tutorial',
              label: 'Tutorial',
            },
            {
              type: 'doc',
              id: 'i18n/git',
              label: 'Using Git',
            },
            {
              type: 'doc',
              id: 'i18n/crowdin',
              label: 'Using Crowdin',
            },
          ],
        },
        'guides/whats-next',
      ],
    },
    {
      type: 'category',
      label: 'Advanced Guides',
      link: {type: 'doc', id: 'advanced/index'},
      items: [
        'advanced/architecture',
        'advanced/plugins',
        'advanced/routing',
        'advanced/ssg',
        'advanced/client',
      ],
    },
    {
      type: 'category',
      label: 'Upgrading',
      link: {
        type: 'doc',
        id: 'migration/index',
      },
      items: [
        'migration/v3',
        {
          type: 'category',
          label: 'To Docusaurus v2',
          items: [
            'migration/v2/migration-overview',
            'migration/v2/migration-automated',
            'migration/v2/migration-manual',
            'migration/v2/migration-versioned-sites',
            'migration/v2/migration-translated-sites',
          ],
        },
      ],
    },
  ],
  api: [
    'cli',
    'docusaurus-core',
    {
      type: 'autogenerated',
      dirName: 'api',
    },
  ],
};
export default sidebars;