Always hide side panel option

Menno555

Windows 11 Pro 23H2 (22631.3958)
Vivaldi 6.8.3381.53

I don't use the sidepanel at all and normally it stays closed.
Bust as soon as I use for example Ctrl-Shift-D (Downloads) or Ctrl-Shift-H (History) and close those again, the sidepanel just stays visible as a small vertical bar and have to use F4 to close it.
Of course that's a minor thing to do, but it's annoying that that (for me) useless sidepanel pops up and stays vissible while initially it's closed.
I can't imagine that there is no option for that. So, what am I missing? How can I disable that whole sidepanel thing completely so it disappears after closing for example Downloads or History?

Thanks in advance

Pathduck

@Menno555 Hi, you should learn to do what I do - press F4 to close the panel + panel bar directly. After a while it become muscle memory anyway.

Actually this is an old pet peeve of mine, the show panel hotkey is not a toggle as it should be - I even reported a bug years ago:
VB-51443 Show panel hotkey is not a toggle as it should be.

Or look into floating panels, then they disappear once focus is back on the page.
https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/panels/panels/

Of course, if you don't use the side panels at all, just unmap the hotkeys, enable the downloads popup instead and use the full history manager. There's lots of options once you learn to look in the settings.

Menno555

@Pathduck
Thanks for the tips.
Indeed the floating panel (with closing when inactive) solved the problem. So huge thanks
Still think it's weird that almost for everything in Vivaldi there is a simple way to hide/replace things but for that sidebar thing, there is no permanent simple disable checkbox.

Pathduck

@Menno555 You're welcome

Vivaldi rewards people who are willing to spend some time looking into the settings and playing with different stuff. So try to do that and learn how things work

Still think it's weird that almost for everything in Vivaldi there is a simple way to hide/replace things but for that sidebar thing, there is no permanent simple disable checkbox.

Panels always were a big deal in Vivaldi - web panels is still one of its major feature to me, even if inferior browser have to some degree duplicated them.

There are still some things that can only be accessed from a panel - The Sessions and Window panels for instance. I think they're wary of adding a "disable panels" toggle since there are no alternative management for some panel features.

Like I said you can basically go through settings, disable all panel-related hotkeys (to avoid triggering them) and replacing them with stuff like the Downloads button, the Reading list button, the Bookmarks+History manager etc. Then panels will be effectively "disabled" for you.

mikeyb2001

I once had the reverse problem lol i love that bar Shows vivaldi is no ordinary browser