Is there a shortcut to hide the side bar in Visual Studio Code?

Question

It'd be handy if there was a keyboard shortcut for hiding and showing the sidebar. Sublime has cmd+k+b and it's a quick way of gaining some screen real estate when you need it. Anybody know if this exists or if the user can add it manually to VS Code?

Answer 1

The command can be triggered via Ctrl+B on Windows and Linux or Cmd+B on the Mac.

Answer 2

In the VS code version 1.43, you can hide or show the side menu or activity bar by going under the 'VIEW' tab in the nav bar in the top margin of VS CODE(called the 'Menu Bar'). Go to View => Appearance, there you can check or uncheck different nav bars to show/hide each one.

If you have the top bar (Menu Bar) currently hidden press 'alt' key to bring it back then follow above instructions to check it to keep it there permanently if desired.

Answer 3

As Benjamin Pasero's answer states you can use:

• Ctrl+B on Windows and Linux

• ⌘ Cmd+B on the Mac.

but sometimes you have another keyboard shortcut with ⌘ Cmd+B, in my case I had it to format some React code. To reverse that you can use the following:

Code > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts (⌘+K ⌘+S) then search for B and disable the other shortcut command.

You can also change the it and put which ever shortcut you want, just search for Toggle Side Bar Visibility like this:

Answer 4

To hide/show the side bar:

• Ctrl+B on Linux and Windows.

• ⌘ Cmd+B on Mac.

Answer 5

CTRL + ALT + B for the left panel / left side bar.

Answer 6

To Hide the 5 button Activity Bar we can now:

View -> Hide Activity Bar

This is in vscode 1.9, not sure which version it was introduced in.

Answer 7

No need to edit Settings.json directly

Do the following:

1. Open the Keyboard Shortcuts by pressing ctrl+k & ctrl+s
2. Search: "Toggle Activity Bar Visibility"
3. Enter the keyboard shortcut
4. Done!

Activity bar visibility in visual studio code

Answer 8

No answer mentions this: to toggle the search bar that you open with cmd + shift + f the command is ⌥ + cmd + b alongside cmd + b in case you intend to close all side bars (not including minimap and activity bar. Please refer to the other answers for that).

Answer 9

One can also hide the activity bar with the following setting in settings.json:

"workbench.activityBar.visible": false

Answer 10

Just in case you be intended for hiding the right lateral "sidebar", also called minimap, there is no shortcut. But you can configure the settings with: {"editor.minimap.enabled: false"}

Answer 11

There are 3 bars on the side, 2 left and 1 right:

• the activity bar with 5 buttons
• the primary sidebar toggled by clicking any of the activity bar buttons.
• the minimap

All of these hotkeys and more (e.g. the terminal & output panel, Ctrl+J) are now visible through the View (Alt-V) and View>Appearance menus:

The activity bar has no toggle hotkey by default, but you can assign one like this:

{
   "key": "ctrl+alt+b",
   "command": "workbench.action.toggleActivityBarVisibility"
},

Or hide completely with "workbench.activityBar.visible": false

The sidebar toggle hotkey is Ctrl+B by default, but may be overridden by e.g. vim plugin, here's how to enforce or change it:

{
  "key": "ctrl+b",
  "command": "workbench.action.toggleSidebarVisibility"
},

The minimap can be hidden with "editor.minimap.enabled": false and toggled with editor.action.toggleMinimap since vscode 1.16.

And with the Sidebar-activity toggler extension, so you toggle both activity and sidebar together with one key mapping to sidebar-activity-toggler.toggleSidebarAndActivityBar

Answer 12

Mac users,

⌘ + B or ⌘ + 0 - Worked Perfectly