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 file that exports a dictionary of sidebar objects.
2. Pass this object into the @docusaurus/plugin-docs plugin directly or via @docusaurus/preset-classic.

docusaurus.config.js

module.exports = {
  presets: [
    [
      '@docusaurus/preset-classic',
      {
        docs: {
          sidebarPath: require.resolve('./sidebars.js'),
        },
      },
    ],
  ],
};

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:

📄️ Sidebar items

We have introduced three types of item types in the example in the previous section autogenerated, which we will explain in detail later.

📄️ Autogenerated

Docusaurus can create a sidebar automatically from your filesystem structure: each folder creates a sidebar category, and each file creates a doc link.

📄️ Using multiple sidebars

You can create a sidebar for each set of Markdown files that you want to group together.

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

module.exports = {
  mySidebar: [
    {
      type: 'autogenerated',
      dirName: '.', // generate sidebar from the docs folder (or versioned_docs/<version>)
    },
  ],
};

You can also define your sidebars explicitly.

Sidebar object

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

module.exports = {
  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

module.exports = {
  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

module.exports = {
  themeConfig: {
    docs: {
      sidebar: {
        autoCollapseCategories: true,
      },
    },
  },
};

Passing custom props

To pass in custom props to a swizzled sidebar item, add the optional customProps object to any of the items:

{
  type: 'doc',
  id: 'doc1',
  customProps: {
    /* props */
  },
};

Sidebar Breadcrumbs

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

module.exports = {
  presets: [
    [
      '@docusaurus/preset-classic',
      {
        docs: {
          breadcrumbs: false,
        },
      },
    ],
  ],
};

Complex sidebars example

A real-world example from the Docusaurus site:

sidebars.js

const sidebars = {
  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/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: 'Migrating from v1 to v2',
      items: [
        'migration/migration-overview',
        'migration/migration-automated',
        'migration/migration-manual',
        'migration/migration-versioned-sites',
        'migration/migration-translated-sites',
      ],
    },
  ],
  api: [
    'cli',
    'docusaurus-core',
    {
      type: 'autogenerated',
      dirName: 'api',
    },
  ],
};
module.exports = sidebars;