Sublime text 3 open folder option not working

Question

When I go to open the folder in Sublime Text 3 and open some folder, instead of creating a sidebar and opening the folder, it just opens a window with the name of the window set to the name of the folder. And the window will be empty! So, for example, I opened a folder called Shopping Cart tutorial. Instead of creating a sidebar and opening the folder, it will create a window with Shopping Cart Tutorial as the name of the window. Again, it will be empty, unless I open some file. Any ideas on how to fix that?

Answer 1

The issue you're seeing here is either that the side bar is not currently being told to be visible, or it's set to be visible but it has nothing to display.

The fix in the first instance is to select View > Side Bar > Show Side bar from the menu, select View: Toggle Side Bar from the command palette, or press Ctrl+KCtrl+B.

The visibility of the side bar is a window by window setting, so if you have this option turned off initially you'll have to perform this step in all current windows to get it to be visible everywhere. Once it's visible, the state is saved and will be used for new windows.

You may notice that this either has no effect, or the menu item in question isn't available and says Hide Side Bar instead. The reason for this is second item I mentioned above; it has nothing to display.

Sublime tries to be as minimal as possible with its UI Chrome so that there's as much room as possible for editing text. For that reason, it will hide the side bar if it thinks that it doesn't need it to be visible.

The side bar can display two things: the list of folders you have open/in your project and the list of files that are currently open. The display of currently open files is controlled by the View > Side Bar > Show Open Files menu item (or the associated toggle command in the command palette).

No matter what you do, the side bar will remain invisible if you have no folders or files open, so regardless of any setting a newly created window that has no folders open and no files open will always have no side bar.

If you turn on the option to show open files, the side bar will appear even in windows where there are no folders open, so long as there is a file open (even an unsaved new file).