The sidebar

The sidebar is two cards on the left of the screen. One holds Home, Messages and your clusters. The other is Files — everything in a cluster, on the board or not — with tabs for the cluster, Recent and Starred, search, Quick look, and Upload above your plan's storage. Drag files onto another cluster to move them; hold Option (Ctrl on Windows) to copy. ⌘\ hides Files, and F opens the full Files page.

Updated October 21, 2026

The sidebar is where everything in a workspace is reachable from: the places you go, the clusters you work in, and the files inside them. On a computer it floats over the left of the screen as two cards; on a phone it is the drawer.

What's in it

The top card:

• The workspace — its name opens the switcher, to change workspace or start a new one. Under it, who else is here right now, or whose workspace it is when it was shared with you.
• Search — the magnifying glass, or ⌘K, searches everything in the workspace. See search.
• Home and Messages — Home is where your projects are; Messages opens over the cluster you are in and shows an unread count.
• Your clusters — the cluster tree, with Shared with me and your tags below it. Click a cluster to open it; the chevron shows the clusters inside it. Right-click a cluster for its menu, which adds Star and, if you can edit it, Always open in Files to the usual cluster actions.

The second card is Files.

Files

Files lists everything in a cluster: photos, video, audio, PDFs and other files, notes, docs and links. A file is in Files whether or not it is on the board. Files you add from the sidebar wait there, marked with a dot and Not on board, until you drag them onto the board or choose Put on board — see Not on board.

Everything is sorted onto shelves — Photos, Video, Audio, Files, Notes, Links and Other. Each shelf's ⤢ opens the full Files page on just that shelf.

The tabs

← and → move along the tabs, and ↓ on the cluster's tab opens its list.

Search, show, sort and group

The search box searches the tab you are on as you type. When nothing there matches, Enter searches the whole workspace instead (⌘Enter does that at any time).

The menu beside it — it reads All files until you change it — has three parts:

Looking at a file

• Click a file for Quick look: it opens large, in front of the board. ← and → step through the files beside it; Esc closes it.
• Double-click it, or press Enter, to go to it: the board flies to its card and selects it, or, for a file that isn't on the board, the full Files page opens with it picked out.
• Right-click it, or press ⇧F10, for its menu: Quick look, Show on board (or Show in Files), Put on board, Star, Download, Share file…, Move to…, Copy to… and Delete. Delete has an undo.

Selecting several

⌘-click adds a file to the selection and ⇧-click selects a run of them. A bar appears with Move…, Copy… and Delete — and Put on board when the selection is waiting off the board. Esc clears the selection, and ⌫ deletes it, with an undo. ↑ and ↓ walk the files, as they walk the clusters in the card above.

The full Files page

⤢ at the top right of Files, or F, opens the cluster's files full screen: the full Files page — this card grown, with folders, a grid or a list, Info and downloads. While it's open, this card folds to a bar, Files · full screen, so the files are listed once; its Shrink, F again or ⌘\ brings the board back. Opening the page this way is yours alone; it never changes how the cluster opens for anyone else. To make a cluster open in Files for everyone, choose Always open in Files from its menu in the sidebar.

Moving and copying files

Drag files to move them between clusters. The label at the pointer says what letting go will do before you do it.

Hold Option (⌥) on a Mac, or Ctrl on Windows, while you let go to copy instead. On Windows, Alt copies too. Move to… and Copy to… in a file's menu do the same with a list of clusters to pick from.

• A move takes the file's name, tags, comments, star and share link with it. The toast that follows says where it went, offers Put on board for files that landed in Files, and Undo puts everything back where it was.
• A copy is a new card showing the same stored file: nothing is uploaded again and it takes no extra storage, but it counts toward your plan's card limit. The original stays where it was, with its comments, star and share link. A note or doc is copied whole.
• Files stay in their workspace. A cluster in another workspace — one shared with you, say — won't take them, and the label says why before you let go.
• A cluster you can only view can't take files, and its files can only be copied out of it, never moved.

Holding a file over a folded cluster in the tree for a moment unfolds it, so you can drop it into a cluster inside.

Upload and storage

The foot of Files shows how much of your plan you have used: on the free plan, your cards and your storage on one line — the free plan stops at whichever fills first — and on a paid plan, storage alone. The bar turns red when it is nearly full. Click it for Plan and billing.

Upload beside it adds files to the cluster you are in, or, from Home, to a cluster you pick. They go in as Not on board, and you stay where you are while they upload. Dragging files from your computer onto a cluster's name in the sidebar does the same for that cluster, even one you don't have open — the row shows the upload's progress.

Hiding Files, and sizing the cards

• Hide, on the Files card, or ⌘\, folds Files to a Files bar under your clusters and gives the board the room. Press the bar, or ⌘\ again, to bring it back. (Inside a note or a doc, ⌘\ clears formatting instead.) ⌘K → "Hide files in the sidebar" does the same. While the full Files page is open, the card is already folded, and ⌘\ brings the board back instead.
• ⌘B, or the button at the top of the sidebar, hides the whole sidebar.
• Each card has its own size. Drag a card's right edge, its bottom edge or its corner. Double-click a handle to put that size back.
• Side by side or stacked. Files sits under the clusters, or beside them. The button at the top of Files switches, and dragging a stacked card wide enough puts Files beside the clusters on its own; dragging the pair narrow enough stacks them again. Side by side chosen with the button stays that way until you press it again. A window too narrow for both keeps them stacked.

Sizes and arrangement are remembered on your device, not your account: they belong to the screen.

On a phone

On a phone the sidebar is the drawer, behind Open menu at the top left. It holds the same things — Home, Messages, your clusters and Files, with the same tabs, search and menus — at full width, without the sizing handles. The list of clusters opens as a sheet from the bottom, with Done. Hold a file for its menu; its Select puts a check on every file, so taps pick several for the bar at the bottom of Files, which ends with Done. Going to a file, or opening the full Files page, closes the drawer.

Machine-readable: /docs/clusters/sidebar.md · /llms.txt
What changed and when: /changelog