The sidebar has three quite different modes. Most people never discover this and stay on the default, which is fine, but the other two suit real working styles better.
All of it lives in your profile under Appearance.
The three modes
Quick Nav
A narrow rail of icons. Hovering a hub opens a small popup with that hub's modules.
Best for people who know where things are. It gives the most screen back to the work, and the popup is faster than expanding and collapsing a panel all day.
The cost is that it relies on recognising icons. In the first fortnight that is a real cost and it disappears completely afterwards.
Full Menu
The rail plus labels, with hubs expanding in place.
Best for the first month, and for anybody who works across many hubs. Nothing has to be recognised, everything is readable, and the trade is horizontal space.
This is where to start. Switching to Quick Nav later takes one click and by then the icons mean something.
Studio
A different shape again, for working inside one area for long stretches rather than moving between them.
Best for deep work in a single hub.
Which side it sits on
The sidebar can live on the left or the right.
Left is conventional and correct for most people. Right is genuinely better on a very wide screen, where the left edge is a long way from where your eyes actually are, and for anybody who reads right to left.
It is one setting and it moves everything, including the hover behaviour.
Rail colour
Two options: colored or monochrome.
Colored tints each band, so the six groups are distinguishable at a glance without labels. Monochrome makes the whole rail one graphite tone.
Colored is easier to learn and busier to look at. Monochrome is calmer and relies on position. Most people prefer colored for a month and monochrome afterwards, which is a reasonable description of learning any interface.
Collapsing
The sidebar collapses to give the screen over to the work, and there is a keyboard shortcut for it so you are not aiming at a small control.
Worth knowing: a collapsed sidebar plus the search box is a genuinely complete way to use the product. Some people work that way permanently and navigate entirely by keyboard.
Pinning what you actually use
Modules can be pinned so they sit within reach rather than behind a hub.
The discipline that makes this work is restraint. Three or four pins is a shortcut; eleven is a second sidebar with the same problem as the first. Pin the screens you open every day, and leave everything else to search.
Density on small screens
The sidebar takes horizontal space, and on a laptop that space is competing with the work.
Two combinations worth knowing. Quick Nav plus a collapsed right edge gives the most room to the middle of the screen and is what most people on a 13-inch machine end up with. Full Menu on a large monitor costs nothing and saves recognition effort.
Switching between them as you move between machines is reasonable and takes one click, but remember the setting follows your profile rather than the device, so it changes both.
Fonts
Three typeface pairings are offered, and they change the whole application.
This is a genuine accessibility setting rather than decoration. If text feels tight or hard to scan, try the others before adjusting your browser zoom; the pairings differ in how open the letterforms are and one of them will suit you better.
Studio, briefly
The third mode is worth a sentence more than it usually gets, because the name does not explain it.
Studio is for staying inside one area for hours rather than moving between them. It gives that area's own navigation more room and treats the rest of the platform as somewhere you will go later.
The people it suits are the ones who spend a day in a single hub: somebody working a pipeline all afternoon, or writing in one place. If your day is spread across four hubs, it is the wrong choice and Quick Nav is the right one.
Two mistakes worth avoiding
Changing modes while you are still learning. Every switch resets the muscle memory you were building, and the fortnight of mild confusion that follows gets blamed on the product rather than on the switching.
Pinning as a substitute for search. A pinned list that grows past four items is a sign you are avoiding the keyboard. Pins are for the two screens you open every single day; everything else is faster typed.
What to change and when
Week one: nothing. Learn the default first, so you know what you are changing.
Week two: pick a mode. If you have found yourself expanding and collapsing constantly, go to Quick Nav. If you are still hunting, stay on Full Menu.
Week three: pin the two or three screens you open every day, and consider monochrome.
After that: leave it alone. Navigation you are still adjusting after a month is navigation you are thinking about instead of working.
Hover behaviour
Two of the modes lean on hovering, and the distinction between them catches people out.
Hover for section popup shows one hub's modules in a small panel beside the rail, without changing the sidebar itself.
Hover to open full sidebar expands the whole thing while your pointer is over it, then collapses again when you leave.
The first is precise and stays out of the way. The second is comfortable and takes over more of the screen for as long as you are near it. Neither is better; they suit different tolerances for movement on screen.
There is a deliberate delay before either fires, so passing your mouse across the rail on the way somewhere else does not trigger anything.
Right edge
Separately from the sidebar, the right edge of some screens can be collapsed to give the middle more room.
Worth knowing mostly because it is easy to collapse by accident and then wonder where a panel went. The same control brings it back.
What none of this changes
What you can see. Modes change the shape of the sidebar, never its contents. If a hub is missing it is a permission or a module, and no appearance setting will bring it back.
What anybody else sees. Every setting here is yours alone.
The keyboard. Shortcuts work identically in all three modes, which is what makes it safe to experiment.
Did this answer your question?
No, ask a person