mkdocs-toggle-sidebar-plugin

This package allows you to toggle the left (navigation) and right (table of contents) sidebars on a couple of MkDocs themes such as:

• Material for MkDocs: material
• Builtin themes: mkdocs, readthedocs

You can play around with it and these themes on the test page.

The settings are stored using the localStorage object, so that it will persist between pages.

I wrote it after getting frustrated by the browser's Find in page function matching way to many links in the navigation sidebar instead of searching in the actual page's content.

Usage

Setup

First install the PyPI package:

pip install mkdocs-toggle-sidebar-plugin

Add something like the following to your mkdocs.yml:

plugins:
- search
- toggle-sidebar

Key bindings

The plugin adds the following key bindings:

Key	Action
b	toggle both (TOC and navigation)
m	toggle navigation menu
t	toggle TOC

For some themes like readthedocs navigation and TOC are combined. In this case the state of TOC is ignored, and only calls for navigation (or all) are interpreted.

Configuration options

You can overwrite the defaults like this:

plugins:
- search
- toggle-sidebar:
    async: False
    debug: True
    enabled: True
    inline: False
    javascript: ./toggle-sidebar.js
    show_navigation_by_default: False
    show_toc_by_default: False
    theme: material
    toggle_button: all

The following options exist:

Option	Type	Default value	Description
async	bool	False	Asynchronously load the JavaScript file created by the plugin
debug	bool	False	Show some debug messages during mkdocs build (for example related to theme detection)
enabled	bool	True	Can be used to disable the plugin. Usually used in combination with environment variables like enabled: !ENV [TOGGLE_SIDEBAR, false] as described in mkdocs's docs
inline	bool	True	Instead of storing the javascript code in the file specified by javascript, it is directly copied into each page. Slightly increases page size, but can improve load times a little bit and reduce flickering on page (re-)load
javascript	str	"assets/javascripts/toggle-sidebar.js"	The path where to store the output file
show_navigation_by_default	bool	True	Whether to show the navigation by default
show_toc_by_default	bool	True	Whether to show the table of contents by default
theme	str	auto	Used for theme detection. With auto, the plugin tries to automatically detect the theme. But you can also force it to use a specific theme preset that you know will work. Currently supported values: material/ansible, mkdocs, readthedocs.
toggle_button	str	"none"	Can be set to show a toggle button (see below)

Toggle button

When you set the toggle_button option to navigation, toc or all, it will add a button that looks like a hamburger menu (three horizontal bars) on a theme-dependent location. It is usually in the nav or the top bar. Clicking the button will toggle the navigation, table of contents, or both (depending on the supplied value). By leaving the field empty or setting it to none, no button is added.

Exported API functions

This plugin exposes some JavaScript functions, that can show, hide or toggle the visibility of the sidebars. You can see how they are called in docs/javascript-functions.md and how they are defined in src/mkdocs_toggle_sidebar_plugin/toggle-sidebar.js.

In short there are:

• MkdocsToggleSidebarPlugin.setNavigationVisibility(show: bool)
• MkdocsToggleSidebarPlugin.setTocVisibility(show: bool)
• MkdocsToggleSidebarPlugin.setAllVisibility: (showNavigation: bool, showTOC: bool)
• MkdocsToggleSidebarPlugin.toggleNavigationVisibility()
• MkdocsToggleSidebarPlugin.toggleTocVisibility()
• MkdocsToggleSidebarPlugin.toggleAllVisibility()

The names and parameters should be self-explanatory.

Theme support

Below shows the latest themes that I have tested. The table is not updated regularly, but the plugin should generally work for other theme versions too.

Theme	Theme version	Plugin version	Status
mkdocs-ansible	25.6.0	0.0.6	works
mkdocs-material	9.6.14	0.0.4+	works
mkdocs (default)	1.6.1	0.0.4+	works
readthedocs	1.6.1	0.0.4+	works

Just open an issue / PR if you use a strange theme or the info above is not up-to-date anymore.

Note to self

Test material theme:

./serve.sh

Test mkdocs theme:

./serve.sh --theme mkdocs

Test mkdocs, readthedocs and material themes:

./build.sh
python3 -m http.server --directory './public/'

Test oldest python version supported by me (3.9):

docker run --rm -it -v "$PWD:/share" -w "/share" -p 8000:8000 --entrypoint=bash python:3.9 ./serve.sh

Test newest available python version (currently 3.13):

docker run --rm -it -v "$PWD:/share" -w "/share" -p 8000:8000 --entrypoint=bash python:latest ./serve.sh

Notable changes

Version 0.0.6

• Fixed toggle button appearing delayed on slow loading pages (see #6)
• Fixed behavior when using Material's navigation.instant feature (see #5)
• Added inline option that prevents page flickering on reload (see #4). It is now enabled by default and async is disabled by default, to prevent the flickering. To revert to the old behavior you can set async: True and inline: False in the plugin's config in your mkdocs.yml
• Added theme option that allows you to override theme detection (see #3)
• Added support for ansible theme (see #3)
• Added fallback to check theme.extra.base_theme from mkdocs.yml when other theme detection logic fails (see #3)
• Added debug option

Version 0.0.5

• Bug fix: On small screens with the material theme the navigation would be hidden, even when the hamburger menu was opened.

Version 0.0.4

• Export API via MkdocsToggleSidebarPlugin object. This lets you create custom buttons or key bindings to hide, show or toggle the side bars.
• Added toggle_button option and implemented it for Material theme.

Version 0.0.3

• Changed internal API:
  • Element hiding/restyling is now done via CSS, so it is easier to undo. You should no longer have problems on devices with small screens (like phones) having broken layouts.

Version 0.0.2

• Added support for mkdocs and readthedocs theme.

Version 0.0.1

• Prototype with mkdocs-material implementation.