How do I disable panels completely?

[improvethebugreporter]

I don't use panels. I don't mind having the panels sidebar, once I've right-clicked on all the non-monochrome icons and removed them, as it's not too visually intrusive.

HOWEVER, as extensions are updating to Manifest V3, every extension that has a panel gets its icon re-added to the sidebar each time it updates to a new version.

Worse, when this happens, a panel (not always the one from the extension that updated, either) is opened, and I have to close the panel. In every Vivaldi window, separately.

I've reported this as VB-108469, but until it's fixed — is there a way for me to just turn Panels off completely? It seems odd that a browser with this many configuration options doesn't allow that…

[luetage]

@improvethebugreporter The “panel” command toggles the panel container. Open quick commands, type "panel,” hit Enter to execute. You can also set this as a keyboard shortcut or mouse gesture. Or use the panel toggle available from the toolbar editor to turn it off/on.

[improvethebugreporter]

@luetage said in How do I disable panels completely?:

@improvethebugreporter The “panel” command toggles the panel container. Open quick commands, type "panel,” hit Enter to execute. You can also set this as a keyboard shortcut or mouse gesture. Or use the panel toggle available from the toolbar editor to turn it off/on.

Thanks — I'd forgotten about that!

Now to wait for some extension to update to see if it stays hidden. The fact that an extension that's been removed from the panel bar re-adds itself under MV3 doesn't fill me with confidence that it won't also cause the panel bar to reappear

[luetage]

@improvethebugreporter If you hide the panel container, I wouldn’t remove the extensions, just leave them there, you won’t see them and they won’t load when the panel isn’t visible, therefore this won’t use any resources. I also suspect the panel to auto‐activate when you add an extension with a panel, but you can simply close it with a single click/command. Shouldn’t be too disrupting.

Of course you could add custom CSS to make sure the panel never appears, this can be accomplished with a single instruction:

#panels-container {
  display: none;
}

[improvethebugreporter]

@luetage said in How do I disable panels completely?:

@improvethebugreporter If you hide the panel container, I wouldn’t remove the extensions, just leave them there, you won’t see them and they won’t load when the panel isn’t visible, therefore this won’t use any resources. I also suspect the panel to auto‐activate when you add an extension with a panel, but you can simply close it with a single click/command. Shouldn’t be too disrupting.

Of course you could add custom CSS to make sure the panel never appears, this can be accomplished with a single instruction:

#panels-container {
  display: none;
}

Thanks – unfortunately, I've just tried adding that to my existing (and working!) custom CSS, and it does nothing; as soon as I re-enable SingleFile, the panel reopens and ignores the display: none.