tty7/docs/window/sidebar.mdx

---
title: "The sidebar"
description: "Tabs grouped by repository automatically, groups you pin kept above them, and branch, diff counts, and agent status on every row."
---

The left sidebar is tty7's tab bar, and it is the default because a vertical row
has room for things a horizontal chip does not: the repository a tab belongs to,
the branch it is on, how much has changed there, and what a coding agent in it
is doing.

<kbd>⌘ B</kbd> shows and hides it. Drag its right edge to resize.

<Frame caption="Tabs grouped by repository, with agent avatars, status dots, branch, and +N −M">
  <img src="/images/sidebar.webp" alt="The tty7 tab sidebar" />
</Frame>

## Groups

The sidebar groups tabs by repository automatically. Pin what you want to keep.

**Auto groups** sit below a divider. Every tab you have not pinned is filed
under the git repository its working directory is in — a linked worktree under
the repository it belongs to, a submodule under itself — and an SSH tab under
the host it is connected to, so `/home/ubuntu` on two machines is two groups.
Everything else collects in a trailing **Ungrouped** section. An auto group
follows the tab's working directory, not its history: `cd` into another
repository and the row moves; switching branches never does. When its last tab
leaves, the group is gone.

**Pinned groups** sit above the divider, in the order you put them, and stay
until you delete them — an empty one keeps its place with a **+ New Tab** row.
A tab in a pinned group never leaves it on its own. There are two kinds:

- A **folder group** keeps a directory. A tab whose working directory *enters*
  the folder joins it — a tab opened there, a `cd` into it, or a worktree of the
  repository the folder is. When folders nest, the deepest one wins, so pinning
  a monorepo and one package in it files the package's tabs under the package.
  A tab you drag out while it is still inside stays out until it leaves the
  folder and comes back. Hover the header for the folder's path; click its pin
  to unpin it, and its tabs go back to auto groups.
- A **label group** is just a name, for tabs that belong together for a reason
  no directory shows. Tabs go in and out of it by hand.

Ways to pin:

| To get | Do this |
|---|---|
| A folder group from an auto group | Click the pin on its header, or drag the header above the divider |
| A folder group from a folder | Drop it from Finder onto the sidebar, choose **Pin as Group** on it in the Files panel, or run **Open Folder as Group…** from the command palette |
| A label group | Right-click a tab → **Move to Group → New Group…**, or run **New Group** from the command palette |

Right-click a pinned group's header to rename it, point it at a folder (**Set
Folder…**, or **Use Current Tab's Folder**), clear its folder, open a tab in it,
or delete it. Deleting a group closes nothing: its tabs go back to auto
grouping. An auto group has no rename — pin it first. The **+** on a header
opens a tab in that group's folder (a label group's opens where <kbd>⌘ T</kbd>
would), and <kbd>⌘ T</kbd> itself joins the group of the tab you are in.

Groups, their order, and which ones are folded are kept with the workspace, so
every window onto it — and the next launch — shows the same thing.

**Settings → Window & Tabs → Auto grouping** turns auto groups off. The tabs you
have not pinned then sit in one flat list below your pinned groups, which show
either way.

## What a row tells you

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Who is running there" icon="robot">
    A brand avatar when a coding agent is in the tab, plus a status dot —
    blue for working, amber for needs-your-input, green for done.
  </Card>
  <Card title="Where it is" icon="code-branch">
    The pane's git branch, refreshed on `cd` and whenever a command finishes.
  </Card>
  <Card title="What changed" icon="plus-minus">
    The working-tree diff as `+N −M`. Click the counts to open the
    [diff overlay](/git/diffs).
  </Card>
  <Card title="Whether you have looked" icon="circle-dot">
    An unread marker on tabs where a coding agent finished its turn while you
    were elsewhere. Agent tabs also carry *Mark as Unread* in the right-click
    menu, once there is a finished turn to mark.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

If you would rather the counts not be clickable, turn off **Settings → Window &
Tabs → Open diff preview from sidebar counts**. The branch and the numbers stay;
they simply stop opening the overlay.

## Rearranging

Drag a row to reorder it within its group, or drag a group header to move the
group — pinned groups among pinned groups, auto groups among auto groups. Drag
a row onto a pinned group to put it there, or anywhere below the divider to
hand it back to auto grouping. A row cannot be dragged into an auto group: its
membership comes from the working directory, so `cd` is what moves it.

Drag a row out over the panes instead and it stops being a session of its own:
it lands as a pane of the tab on screen, wherever the highlight says. Dragging a
pane the other way — by its grip, onto the sidebar — gives it a row of its own,
between whichever two the caret lands between. See
[making one tab a pane of another](/window/tabs-and-splits#making-one-tab-a-pane-of-another).

## Naming

Almost no tab has a name of its own, so the sidebar falls back:

1. a name you set (right-click → **Rename Tab…**)
2. the title the shell is reporting — the running command, usually
3. **Shell 3**, numbered by position, when there is no title at all

`tty7 tab ls` answers the same question with more evidence, because a script has
no screen to look at. Its `label` falls back through the name, then the coding
agent running in the tab ("Claude Code"), then the last segment of the working
directory, then the foreground process — while `name` stays literal, so a script
can tell a real name from a stand-in.

## The switcher

<kbd>⌘ ⇧ O</kbd> opens the workspace switcher: every workspace on every machine
you are connected to on the left, that workspace's tabs on the right. Type to
filter both, <kbd>⇥</kbd> to cross into the tab column, <kbd>⏎</kbd> to open.

From here you can also rename a workspace, open one in a new window, stop one,
or connect to a machine you have a profile for.