[BUG] Claude Code Sidebar Icon Not Visible by Default
Status Fixed / completed
Maintainer reply ✓ Yes — hackyon-anthropic
Workaround ✓ Mentioned in thread ↓
Activity 8 comments · opened Sep 29, 2025 · closed Sep 30, 2025
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (hackyon-anthropic, collaborator)
responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.
Preflight Checklist
- [x] I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
- [x] This is a single bug report (please file separate reports for different bugs)
- [x] I am using the latest version of Claude Code
What's Wrong?
The Claude Code VS Code extension (v2.0.0) includes a sidebar view and Activity Bar icon, but they are hidden by default due to a conditional visibility flag (claude-code:sidebarVisible). Users must manually run the "Claude Code: Open in Side Bar" command to make the icon appear, and this preference is not persisted across VS Code restarts.
What Should Happen?
When the Claude Code extension is installed, the sidebar icon should be visible in the Activity Bar by default, allowing users to easily discover and access the feature. That's how other extensions work.
Steps to Reproduce
- Install
anthropic.claude-codeversion 2.0.0 in VS Code - Reload/restart VS Code
- Check Activity Bar (left sidebar) for Claude Code icon
- Icon is not visible
Claude Model
Sonnet (default)
Is this a regression?
No, this never worked
Last Working Version
_No response_
Claude Code Version
2.0
Platform
Anthropic API
Operating System
Ubuntu/Debian Linux
Terminal/Shell
VS Code integrated terminal
Additional Information
_No response_
8 Comments
Found 1 possible duplicate issue:
This issue will be automatically closed as a duplicate in 3 days.
🤖 Generated with Claude Code
This is a different issue; I still saw the Claude "spark" icon in the tab bar on the upper right, just not the extension icon in the sidebar on the left side, where extensions open panels.
Thanks for the report, @rodalpho.
For now, we've decided to hide the extension icon and guide users to the tab bar icon instead, as the extension icon is currently always located on the primary sidebar to the left (it's currently a limitation of VSCode API).
We are looking to provide this functionality once VSCode's API to control which sidebar the extension goes becomes public (see https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/6732).
Feel free to follow along this issue if you're interested:
https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/2080
OK, thanks for reviewing. I guess I'll just run that command every time I reopen VScode.
You can map keyboard shortcuts to open it. THis is what I had to resort to.
Yep that’s what I did too. Surprised anthropic didn’t want it there, but at least there’s a workaround.
so they're saying, "We don't want to put the extension icon where everyone sees all the other AI extensions." ?
This issue has been automatically locked since it was closed and has not had any activity for 7 days. If you're experiencing a similar issue, please file a new issue and reference this one if it's relevant.