Chrome Side Panel: Full Guide for Power Users (2026)

Key takeaways

• Chrome’s side panel is a fixed ~360px vertical panel docked to the edge of the browser window — not a split view and not resizable beyond dragging. It holds bookmarks, reading list, history, and extension panels.
• Open it: click the panel icon in the toolbar, or press Ctrl+Shift+S (Windows/Linux) / ⌘+Shift+S (Mac). Move it left in Settings → Appearance → Side panel.
• Extensions that register the side panel API replace the Chrome default content inside the panel. SuperchargeNavigation adds workspaces, a tab list, command bar search, and multi-select bulk actions there — and opens with Alt+B.

Chrome shipped the side panel in Chrome 107 as a native UI surface: a docked vertical area roughly 360 pixels wide that sits alongside the main browsing window. By Chrome 114, extensions could register their own content there. As of Chrome 149, the panel holds Chrome’s built-in tools on the left and any extension panel the user selects. It persists as you switch tabs, and you cannot detach it or float it to a second monitor.

Open and Dock the Side Panel

Two ways to open the panel:

Toolbar button. Look for a square icon with a vertical bar on the right side, located between the address bar area and your pinned extension icons. Click it to toggle the panel open or closed. If you do not see it, right-click the toolbar and select Show side panel button.

Keyboard shortcut. Chrome 114 added a built-in shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+S on Windows and Linux, ⌘+Shift+S on Mac. This shortcut works regardless of what is currently displayed in the panel.

Once open, the panel defaults to the right side. To move it left:

1. Go to Settings → Appearance → Side panel and choose Left, or
2. Right-click the panel border and select Move side panel to the left.

The position setting is global. It applies to Chrome’s built-in panels and extension panels alike. Most users who rely on the panel heavily prefer the left position: it sits where a vertical tab sidebar would naturally live, on the same side as where reading begins.

Panel width is user-adjustable by dragging the inner edge, but the adjustment is temporary. Chrome does not persist custom panel widths across sessions. The default is approximately 360 pixels.

What Lives in the Panel by Default

Chrome 149 ships four built-in panel tools. Each appears in a dropdown at the top of the panel:

All four persist across tab switches in the same window. Switching from one tab to another does not reload or reset the panel: it maintains its state and scroll position. This window-level persistence is a deliberate design choice in the Chrome sidePanel API, and it distinguishes the side panel from an iframe or popup.

The built-in panels are functional but narrow in scope. Bookmarks and history duplicate functionality that already exists in full-page views (chrome://bookmarks, chrome://history), squeezed into a fixed-width strip. For most power users, the value comes from what extensions add rather than the defaults.

Adding Extensions to the Side Panel

Any extension built for Chrome 114+ can register a side panel. When one does, its panel entry appears in the same dropdown alongside Chrome’s built-in tools. The user selects which panel to display. Only one can be shown at a time.

Extensions open their panel in one of three ways:

• Toolbar icon click (if the extension configures this as its default action)
• A keyboard shortcut the extension registers via manifest commands
• Programmatically via chrome.sidePanel.open(), triggered by a user gesture

The extension side panel API landed in Chrome 114 with the sidePanel manifest permission. chrome.sidePanel.open() requires Chrome 116+. chrome.sidePanel.close() requires Chrome 141+. Extensions targeting earlier Chrome versions need to handle the absence of close() gracefully.

Scope matters. The API supports both tab-scoped and window-scoped panels. A tab-scoped panel only shows on a specific tab. A window-scoped panel (opened with windowId rather than tabId) stays visible as you switch between tabs, the same way Chrome’s built-in panels behave.

SuperchargeNavigation (Nav) uses window scope. Opening the panel with Alt+B calls chrome.sidePanel.open({ windowId }). The panel stays up across every tab in that window without requiring a tab switch to reload it. Alt+B also works as a toggle: pressing it when the panel is open closes it.

Inside Nav’s side panel: a named workspace switcher (switch between isolated tab sets without closing anything), a vertical tab list with full titles, the Alt+K command bar entry point (a search bar that filters tabs, history, and bookmarks), and a multi-select bulk-action toolbar that appears when you select multiple tabs. Bulk actions include pin/unpin, mute/unmute, group, lock group, and close. These are not Chrome defaults. They are extension content registered to the same panel surface.

Peek preview (Alt+Click a link) renders as an inline iframe overlay in the main page, not inside the panel. The panel stays visible alongside it.

What the Panel Won’t Do

The side panel has real architectural limits. These are not missing features waiting for a future Chrome release. They reflect deliberate constraints in how the panel is designed.

Not a true split view. The panel sits alongside the main tab content but cannot be used as a second browsing surface. You cannot navigate to a different website inside the panel, run two pages side by side, or resize the panel to take up half the screen. Chrome 145 introduced a separate split view experiment (the #side-by-side-browsing flag) that tiles two full Chrome tabs, independent of the side panel and unrelated to it. If you are looking for a split view that disappeared after a Chrome update, that flag is the right place to look.

One extension at a time. The panel dropdown shows all registered extensions, but only one can be active simultaneously. Switching from Nav’s workspace view to the built-in bookmarks panel hides Nav. There is no multi-pane layout inside the side panel.

Width is not session-persistent. Dragging the inner edge resizes the panel within a session, but Chrome does not save the width. Next browser open, the panel resets to its default width (~360px). Extensions have no API to set or persist a custom panel width: that is a Chrome-level limitation.

Not free-floating. The panel cannot be detached from the browser window, moved to a second monitor, or turned into a standalone popup. It is always anchored to the browser edge.

No multi-panel layout. You cannot stack two extension panels or show a Chrome built-in alongside an extension simultaneously. One panel surface, one thing at a time.

For productivity users who want Arc-style split browsing (two pages with independent navigation), Chrome 149 does not deliver that through the side panel. The closest native option is the split view flag (#side-by-side-browsing), which tiles two tabs in the main window but has no relation to the side panel. For session persistence, workspace isolation, and keyboard-driven tab management, those require an extension registered to the side panel.

When the Built-in Panel Is Enough

If your use case is occasional reference: checking a bookmark, glancing at history, pulling something from the reading list, Chrome’s defaults handle it without any extension. The bookmarks and history panels do the job well for quick lookups.

The built-in panel also has no overhead. It is part of Chrome itself, with no service worker, no additional memory footprint, and no permissions to review.

Where the built-in panel runs out: managing 20+ tabs across multiple projects, recovering a session after an unexpected restart, navigating to a specific tab without scrolling, or working in named contexts (Work, Research, Client A) that need to isolate from each other. Those needs exceed what a bookmarks sidebar and a history list can address.

If you find yourself hitting those limits, SuperchargeNavigation runs in the same panel surface — no new UI real estate required. Alt+B opens it. Everything else in Chrome stays exactly as it was.

Deciding What Setup Fits

Single context, low tab count, occasional lookups: the built-in panel is enough. Multiple projects running in parallel, context-switching multiple times a day, or sessions that need to survive a browser restart: the panel surface pays off when an extension claims it.