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When I go to open the folder in Sublime Text 3 and open some folder, instead of creating a sidebar and opening the folder, it just opens a window with the name of the window set to the name of the folder. And the window will be empty! So, for example, I opened a folder called Shopping Cart tutorial. Instead of creating a sidebar and opening the folder, it will create a window with Shopping Cart Tutorial as the name of the window. Again, it will be empty, unless I open some file. Any ideas on how to fix that?

GroxTheProgrammer
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    Did you try using `View > Side Bar > Show Side Bar` from the menu to turn the side bar on? – OdatNurd Nov 10 '16 at 06:04
  • No. It worked. But it still opens it in a new window, a feature that would I would like to remove, if possible. – GroxTheProgrammer Nov 10 '16 at 18:09
  • but at least the sidebar is present now. Thanks for the tip! – GroxTheProgrammer Nov 10 '16 at 18:10
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    If you want to add a folder to an existing window, you need to change how you're telling sublime to do it. If you're doing it from the command line, you need to add `-a` to the command to tell it to add the folder/file to the existing window or it will open in a new window automatically. If you're using shell integration, that would need to be modified to add that parameter. – OdatNurd Nov 10 '16 at 18:37
  • What do you mean by command line? – GroxTheProgrammer Nov 10 '16 at 23:46
  • If you have to ask, you're not using the command line (terminal). – OdatNurd Nov 11 '16 at 04:12
  • ??? So what is terminal then? ??? – GroxTheProgrammer Nov 11 '16 at 16:14
  • The terminal is the command line; the command line is the terminal. It's the place in your OS where you enter commands manually instead of clicking buttons. If you don't know what it is, don't use it. As I mentioned above, you're clearly not using it, so that advice is not for you. – OdatNurd Nov 11 '16 at 19:19
  • Sorry for the noob questions, I started programming just three months ago. I am doing HTML, CSS, Javascript and other web-related languages. – GroxTheProgrammer Nov 11 '16 at 22:44
  • No worries, we were a new once. :) – OdatNurd Nov 11 '16 at 23:17
  • I have more questions, I post them once I can. – GroxTheProgrammer Nov 12 '16 at 01:27
  • Here is my new question. Please help if you can. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/40570816/sublime-text-3-git-gutter-not-working – GroxTheProgrammer Nov 13 '16 at 05:17
  • @OdatNurd your first comment should be an answer. – Ray Sep 22 '17 at 09:21
  • Also, I wish Sublime 3 would open the sidebar automatically upon opening a folder; it would make everything less confusing. – Ray Sep 22 '17 at 09:22
  • @Ray I added the comment as an answer. Once you turn the side bar on, new windows should have it turned on as well, is that not what you're seeing? See my answer for more details. – OdatNurd Sep 23 '17 at 01:45

1 Answers1

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The issue you're seeing here is either that the side bar is not currently being told to be visible, or it's set to be visible but it has nothing to display.

The fix in the first instance is to select View > Side Bar > Show Side bar from the menu, select View: Toggle Side Bar from the command palette, or press Ctrl+KCtrl+B.

The visibility of the side bar is a window by window setting, so if you have this option turned off initially you'll have to perform this step in all current windows to get it to be visible everywhere. Once it's visible, the state is saved and will be used for new windows.

You may notice that this either has no effect, or the menu item in question isn't available and says Hide Side Bar instead. The reason for this is second item I mentioned above; it has nothing to display.

Sublime tries to be as minimal as possible with its UI Chrome so that there's as much room as possible for editing text. For that reason, it will hide the side bar if it thinks that it doesn't need it to be visible.

The side bar can display two things: the list of folders you have open/in your project and the list of files that are currently open. The display of currently open files is controlled by the View > Side Bar > Show Open Files menu item (or the associated toggle command in the command palette).

No matter what you do, the side bar will remain invisible if you have no folders or files open, so regardless of any setting a newly created window that has no folders open and no files open will always have no side bar.

If you turn on the option to show open files, the side bar will appear even in windows where there are no folders open, so long as there is a file open (even an unsaved new file).

OdatNurd
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  • What I meant was, I would be good for the sidebar to automatically open, upon the user opening a folder (as opposed to a file), even though the sidebar was not toggled on before the folder was opened. It's good that it automatically opens a new window when you open a folder, but it would be better to open the sidebar automatically for that window. – Ray Sep 24 '17 at 14:48
  • Oh I just tried it again and it did exactly what I described. Nevermind, ignore me. – Ray Sep 24 '17 at 15:16