Setting to use compact (slim) thread rows for all sidebar sections

[spkaplan]

Problem
In the flat sidebar, Pinned, Active and working threads always render as tall "card" rows. The content box is a fixed h-[4.875rem] (about 78px at the default 16px interface font size). Only Settled and snoozed threads get the compact "slim" row. With many parallel threads, the sidebar fits only a handful of rows on screen.

What I checked

• Nightly 0.0.46-nightly.20261007.2787.
• There is no setting for row density or row variant. In Sidebar.tsx the variant comes from the section: isCard = section === "active" || section === "pinned" || section === "working".
• Custom themes are color-only.
• The interface font size (12–20) is the only lever. It shrinks all UI text, not only the sidebar rows.

Proposal
Add a sidebar setting such as "Compact thread rows". When on, it renders the slim row variant for every section. A three-way density option (comfortable, compact, dense) would also work.

Alternatives considered

• Lowering the interface font size. This affects the whole app.
• Settling threads to get slim rows. This changes thread state just to change layout.

[joshka]

I don't think this should be a setting - better as a visible toggle button as it's something you may reasonably want to toggle on and off as needed.

[grahamfarrar]

+1. The pain is the active and working threads specifically. Settled rows are already slim, but the threads I'm actually juggling are the ones stuck in tall card rows.

A concrete reference for what compact active rows could look like is the Claude desktop app's Code sidebar:

• One line per thread: a small status dot and the title. No project label, branch or footer icons on the row.
• Threads grouped under a plain project header (project name, plus a + for a new thread in that project), so the project name appears once instead of on every row.
• Roughly 3x the threads fit on screen compared with today's card rows.

My use case: about 8 parallel long-lived threads, all active at once in one project (one per home-automation service). With card rows, only about 6 fit on a laptop screen, and every row repeats "Personal". Working/waiting/done status can stay as the dot or a short right-aligned label.

This overlaps with the grouping ideas in #17795 and #16403. Slim active rows plus project headers together would cover both.

[GokulPraveenB]

+1 to this proposal — One line per thread, similar to Claude Desktop. It's minimal and clean and quite readable. Current sidebar is too bloated.

Can we make it a setting to disable / turn-off visibility of project title, branch, relative time etc. So one can customize how they want it.

[diogovalada]

+1. This is the reason I still use the legacy sidebar on desktop. With the card rows only a handful of active threads fit on screen, and when a thread has no branch the third line of the card holds only the provider icon, so a lot of the row is blank space.

The one-line row already exists for settled and snoozed threads, so an option to use it for every section would solve this for me. I agree with @joshka that it's something you'd want to switch quickly. A single "View" menu in the sidebar header with a "Compact rows" checkbox, or a command palette entry, would allow that without adding several header buttons.

I saw that compact rows were merged and then removed in #11685 without a stated reason. Could a maintainer share what the concern was? That would help shape a version you'd be willing to accept.

[raiscan]

I have a narrower, pinned-only use case for this.

When working on multiple projects at once, sidebar space is at a premium. When I pin a thread, I already know what it is and want to keep an eye on it. The icon and title are enough to identify it; always showing the model, branch, and project name takes space that could show more active sessions.

The scope I would like to agree on is:

• One opt-in toggle for compact pinned rows, off by default. Heightmaxxing is opt-in.
• Reuse the existing slim layout for pinned threads, retaining normal title emphasis, full-color project icons, live status, PR badges, and thread actions. Model, branch, and project details remain available in the existing tooltip.
• Keep thread lifecycle and ordering intact. This controls presentation, rather than settling or snoozing work to make it smaller.
• Cover the current web/desktop sidebar. Other sections and the legacy sidebar keep their existing layouts.

There is a concrete prototype in my fork: e5f866060c. Its control is currently Settings → General → Organization → Compact pinned rows; I am open to maintainer direction on placement. It uses the existing client-settings persistence, search, and reset paths.

I checked the default-off behavior, 78px → 36px row height, persistence after reload, restoring the full card, and normal title/icon emphasis in light and dark themes. Focused tests cover settings decoding/reset and drag spacing at 100% and 125% scale. Before/after screenshots are ready for a PR.

Would maintainers support this pinned-only, default-off direction and scope? Alternatively, would you consider it eligible under the focused configuration exception in CONTRIBUTING? I am asking before opening an upstream PR, given that #11685 removed the broader compact sidebar.

Prepared with OpenAI Codex GPT-6.1 (gpt-6.1-sol), using the Codex harness in T3 Code.

[joshka]

one thing to avoid on heightmaxxing is the problem that codex app has. It sometimes has a row, sometimes doesn't so the row height tends to flicker between two values. This is pretty janky.

[ythguanK]

+1. I have about 40 projects, and the same density problem shows up in the Labs boring sidebar: folder headers are 32px and folder thread rows 36px, so only a few projects fit on screen.

In a private fork I tried it as a three-way Settings → General → Sidebar density, which is the option suggested in the proposal. After tuning the sizes live against my own sidebar, the values I settled on were:

Density	One-line rows	Folder headers	Gap above folders
Comfortable (today)	36px	32px	8px
Compact	24px	20px	2px
Dense	20px	20px	0

It is implemented as sidebar CSS variables the rows read, alongside the existing --sidebar-row-content-inset, with today's sizes as the fallbacks, so Comfortable changes nothing. My version leaves the flat sidebar's card rows at their height, which is the other half of this proposal; switching those cards to slim rows at Compact and Dense would fit the same setting.

Happy to open a PR along these lines if the direction is approved.

[edemaine]

I’d like a smaller density option for the regular sidebar: keep the project/status line and thread title, but hide the third metadata line and place provider icons beside the title. This would preserve project identification while fitting more threads and giving cards consistent heights.

Amusingly, Labs has a "two-line folder rows" setting which sounds like exactly what I want. But it's designed to add a row to the boring sidebar. I see two options:

1. Make "two-line folder rows" name accurate, and have it also remove the third row in the regular sidebar.
2. Change it to “Show thread details” option that adds a row in both views. But this would be default on, so it'd change the default boring view.

Happy to make PR if approved or other folks show interest.

[its-luis-serrano]

I run many threads in parallel and use the sidebar as a quick status board. At a glance I only need the project icon, the topic and the status. Branch, model and server were decided when the thread started, and the thread itself still shows them.

#32564 implements this as a Labs option ("Thread rows: 1 line"), with Automatic as the default so nobody's sidebar changes. Its 1-line row shows exactly icon, title and status. Would love a maintainer read on whether that direction works.

[diogovalada]

Following up now that #21039 has replaced the legacy sidebar: Boring sidebar gives us compact rows inside project folders, but pinned threads still use cards, as do active threads when grouping is off. The legacy sidebar is no longer an alternative for that.

Could the one-line layout also be an option in those two places? This was point 4 of my comment on #21039. I'm only asking about row height, not changing how threads are sorted or settled.