Sidebar Panel

Introduction – Where am I?

The Sidebar Panel is NeoMutt’s always-available mailbox list. Unlike the other tour pages, this is not a standalone dialog with its own event loop; it is an embedded panel that sits beside the Index Dialog or Pager Dialog. Its job is to keep your folder tree visible so you can change mailboxes quickly.

Sidebar Panel

Inbox               
Work                
  Projects          
    NeoMutt         
    Vim             
  Lists             
    NeoMutt         
    Kernel          
Personal            
  Family            
  Friends           
  Travel            
Spam                
Drafts              
                    
                    
                    
                    
                    
                    
                    
                    
                    
                    

What am I looking at?

• The main content is a vertical tree of mailboxes, optionally indented to reflect folder hierarchy.

• The highlight shows the mailbox currently selected inside the sidebar.

• Separate colour objects can distinguish the open mailbox, mailboxes with unread mail, flagged mailboxes, and the spool mailbox.

• The divider visually separates the sidebar from the index or pager beside it.

What can I do?

• Move the sidebar highlight up and down through the mailbox list.

• Jump straight to the next or previous mailbox with new mail.

• Open the highlighted mailbox in the Index Dialog.

• Search the sidebar mailbox list and toggle between regular and virtual mailboxes.

• Hide or show the panel without changing the rest of the screen layout.

• Full reference: Sidebar Functions.

Where can I go next?

• <sidebar-open> loads the highlighted mailbox in the Index Dialog, and the Pager Dialog follows that mailbox if it is visible.

• <sidebar-toggle-visible> simply removes or restores the panel while leaving you in the current dialog.

• Sidebar search returns you to the same screen once the mailbox has been chosen or the search is cancelled.

Where did I come from?

• The sidebar appears as part of the Index Dialog or Pager Dialog whenever it is enabled.

• It is populated from your configured mailbox list rather than being opened directly like the Browser Dialog.

How do I configure this?

• Start with Sidebar Config and the main Commands Reference.

• Common options include $sidebar_visible, $sidebar_width, $sidebar_format, $sidebar_sort, $sidebar_folder_indent, $sidebar_indent_string, $sidebar_new_mail_only, and $sidebar_on_right.

• Mailboxes shown in the panel are usually defined with :mailboxes, :named-mailboxes, :sidebar-pin, and :sidebar-unpin.

• Colours come from Colour Objects, especially sidebar_background, sidebar_divider, sidebar_indicator, sidebar_highlight, sidebar_new, sidebar_unread, sidebar_flagged, sidebar_ordinary, and sidebar_spool_file.