Desktop: expose a persistent "keep sidebar open" setting; the pinned state (Ctrl+B) is undiscoverable and undocumented

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing requests and this feature hasn't been requested yet
• [x] This is a single feature request (not multiple features)

Problem Statement

On the Claude Desktop app (Windows), the left sidebar does not stay open. It collapses to a hamburger icon and only appears as a hover flyout, so moving between sessions means hovering and hunting rather than just looking at a list that is always there. On a wide monitor there is plenty of horizontal room for the sidebar, and there is no reason for it to be hidden.

The deeper problem is discoverability, not just behavior. There appears to already be a "pinned" sidebar state bound to Ctrl+B, but nothing in the product or the docs tells you it exists:

• Nothing in the sidebar UI indicates a pin control or a pinned/unpinned state.
• The desktop documentation (https://code.claude.com/docs/en/desktop) documents Ctrl+N for a new session, Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+Shift+Tab to cycle sessions, and Ctrl+\ to close a pane, but has no entry for the sidebar at all.
• The only place I could find the pinned state referenced anywhere is the reproduction steps of another user's bug report, #74117, which begins: "Open Claude Desktop, sidebar collapsed (not pinned, Ctrl+B off)."

So users are in the position of concluding the feature was removed, or never existed, when it may simply be hidden behind an unlabeled, undocumented shortcut.

Making this worse, Ctrl+B is overloaded. In the Claude Code CLI, Ctrl+B backgrounds the current task. A user who tries Ctrl+B while focus is in the prompt box may get task-backgrounding instead of a pinned sidebar, and reasonably conclude the sidebar shortcut does not exist.

Proposed Solution

Give the sidebar a visible, persistent "always open" state that a user can find without reading someone else's bug report.

1. A visible pin control. Put a pin (or equivalent toggle) in the sidebar header. Clicking it locks the sidebar open; clicking again returns it to auto-hide/hover-flyout behavior. The control should show which state it is currently in.

1. Persist the state. The pinned choice should survive app restarts, switching between the Chat / Cowork / Code tabs, and window resizes. It should not silently reset.

1. A setting, not only a shortcut. Expose it in Settings (for example, Settings > Appearance > Sidebar: "Always open" / "Auto-hide"), so it is findable by browsing settings rather than only by knowing a keystroke.

1. Document the shortcut. Add the sidebar toggle to the keyboard shortcuts section of https://code.claude.com/docs/en/desktop, alongside the already-documented Ctrl+N, Ctrl+Tab, and Ctrl+\.

1. Disambiguate Ctrl+B. Since Ctrl+B backgrounds a task in the CLI, either document clearly that the desktop sidebar toggle only applies when focus is outside the prompt box, or bind the sidebar toggle to a shortcut that does not collide.

If the pinned state already exists exactly as described, then items 1, 3, 4, and 5 are the whole request: make it visible and document it.

Alternative Solutions

Things I tried or considered before filing:

• Searching the settings UI and settings.json. No key or option relating to sidebar visibility, pinning, or auto-hide.
• Reading the official desktop docs. The keyboard shortcut coverage documents Ctrl+N, Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+Shift+Tab, and Ctrl+\, but says nothing about the sidebar. This is what led me to believe no such feature existed.
• Searching existing issues. The sidebar issues I found are about organizing things inside the sidebar (#70104, #72126, #73547, #73550, #69343 on reordering/pinning session groups; #74129 on nested folders) or about sidebar bugs (#60003 sidebar disappears/overlays content on Windows; #71752 sidebar will not resize by dragging). None asks for the sidebar pane itself to stay open, and none surfaces a documented way to do it.
• Ctrl+B. Referenced only incidentally in #74117's repro steps. Undocumented, unlabeled in the UI, and collides with the CLI's background-task binding.
• Current workaround. Widen the window and re-hover the hamburger icon every time I want to switch sessions, which is the thing I am asking to avoid.

Priority

High - Significant impact on productivity

Feature Category

Configuration and settings

Use Case Example

Scenario: I run several Code sessions in parallel across different projects on a wide monitor.

1. I open the desktop app and start three sessions: one indexing a media library, one editing a script, one doing research.
2. I want to glance at the sidebar to see which session is still running and which has finished, and click between them freely.
3. Instead, the sidebar is collapsed. To see the session list I have to move the cursor to the hamburger icon and hold it there.
4. The flyout is transient. If I move the cursor toward the thing I want to click, it can close before I get there (this is exactly the failure in #74117).
5. Every session switch repeats steps 3 and 4.

With a pinned sidebar, steps 3 through 5 collapse into "look at the sidebar, click the session." The session list stays on screen the way a file tree stays on screen in VS Code, JetBrains, Finder, Slack, and Obsidian, all of which offer a persistent sidebar that the user can pin.

Additional Context

Environment

• Claude Desktop app, Code tab
• Windows 11 Home (10.0.26200)

Related issues (none are duplicates of this request)

• #74117 — Desktop Linux: sidebar hover flyout closes mid-cursor-travel. Its repro steps are the only reference I can find anywhere to a pinned sidebar state ("not pinned, Ctrl+B off").
• #60003 — Left sidebar disappears / overlays content area on Windows desktop app.
• #71752 — Sidebar panel does not resize when dragging the sidebar edge.
• #70104, #72126, #73547, #73550, #69343 — reordering or pinning session groups within the sidebar.
• #74129 — nested folder hierarchy in the session sidebar.

The cluster above suggests the sidebar is an area users care about a lot and keep filing against. A visible, documented pin control plus a persistent setting would resolve this request and make several of the neighboring complaints less painful.

Similar prior art
VS Code, JetBrains IDEs, Slack, Finder, and Obsidian all keep their sidebar open by default and let the user collapse it, rather than hiding it by default and requiring an undocumented keystroke to keep it open.

Note on framing
If Ctrl+B already does exactly what I am asking for, please treat this as a documentation and discoverability bug rather than a new feature. The functionality being present but unlabeled and absent from the docs is the substance of the complaint either way.