Keyboard navigation for projects/sessions sidebar (focus vs. activate, plus quick actions)
Resolved 💬 4 comments Opened May 10, 2026 by mozltovcoktail Closed May 13, 2026
Summary
The left sidebar in the Claude Code desktop/web app lists projects and their sessions, but it's only navigable with the mouse. There are no keyboard shortcuts to move between projects or sessions, and ~/.claude/keybindings.json doesn't expose any actions for the sidebar (only tabs:*, footer:*, etc.).
Please add first-class keyboard navigation for the sidebar.
Requested behavior
Two distinct modes of navigation:
- Activate — move keyboard focus to a session and switch the main pane to that conversation (the current click behavior).
- Focus only — move a selection cursor through the sidebar without switching the active conversation. This lets the user line up a session and run a quick action against it without leaving the conversation they're currently in.
Quick actions on the focused (not necessarily active) session:
- Rename
- Archive
- Fork / duplicate
- Delete
These should be invokable by keyboard while the sidebar selection is on a given session.
Suggested actions to expose in keybindings.json
So users can rebind to taste:
sidebar:focus— move keyboard focus into the sidebarsidebar:next/sidebar:previous— move selection between sessionssidebar:nextProject/sidebar:previousProject— jump between project groupssidebar:activate— open the focused session in the main pane (Enter)sidebar:renamesidebar:archivesidebar:forksidebar:delete
Why
- Keyboard-driven workflows: power users running many parallel agent sessions shouldn't have to reach for the mouse to triage them.
- "Focus without activate" is the key ask — being able to rename/archive/delete an old session without losing context in the current conversation.
- Parity with how every other sidebar-having editor (VS Code, JetBrains, Finder column view) handles this.
Environment
- Claude Code desktop/web app (sidebar UI)
- macOS
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