[Insomnia 13] Bring back the old sidebar

[Flashky]

I'm writing this immediately after updating to Insomnia 13.
The new sidebar layout drastically increases cognitive load rather than improving the workflow.

• Behavior in 12: Opening a collection filtered the sidebar to show only the requests within that specific collection. It felt like a clean, self-contained workspace.
• Behavior in 13: Opening a collection leaves all other elements visible, creating a lot of unnecessary visual noise.

The clutter defeats the main purpose of organizing items into collections. Insomnia has always stood out because of its simplicity and clean interface, whereas Postman often feels bloated. With this update, Insomnia is starting to feel too much like Postman, losing the exact competitive advantage that made many of us choose it in the first place.

Please consider bringing back the option to isolate the view to the active collection.

[pedro-cf]

NEED this desperately... at least give us an option in preferences.

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[Alxandir]

Absolutely, I have lots of Collections that I use intermittently that are now cluttering my view everyday.
This change is the first time since I started using Insomnia in 2019 when I've considered changing Rest Client!

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[chayglass84]

Hi I'm Cam, the Insomnia PM... sorry to hear this. I think your concern is how many projects you can see all at once if a lot of them are things you use rarely - where would you imagine switching projects instead?

[chayglass84]

Interesting. So like, as one of many possible solutions, if we let you have a dropdown for which project to show (much like organizations in v13), would that solve your problem? Or what would you do if you had a magic wand? (other folks welcome to chime in as well)

[Flashky]

Hi Cam,

Thanks for following up. Regarding the dropdown solution: while it would definitely help users who want to reduce noise across different high-level projects, it doesn't quite solve the core issue I'm facing.

My pain point happens inside a single project. Because I manage a microservices architecture, I have dozens of collections within the exact same project (sharing environments and base URLs). Even if I filter the sidebar to show only this project, I am still forced to see all 30+ collections at once, which creates massive visual clutter when I just want to focus on the one microservice I'm coding right now.

If I had a magic wand, here is how I would see it working:

• "Focus Mode" or "Isolate View": When I click on a collection, I would love an option (maybe a toggle button, a shortcut, or a right-click option) to "Enter/Focus Collection". This would temporarily hide all other collections in the sidebar, making the current collection act as the root folder.

• Bring back the philosophy of v12: In v12: selecting a collection felt like entering a dedicated workspace. Having that scoping mechanism back—even as an optional setting in preferences like "Isolate sidebar to active collection"—would completely restore that clean, focused developer experience that made Insomnia superior to other rest clients.

• Maybe the v12 philosophy could be merged into v13 philosophy: split the side bar into two collapsible boxes, the upper box contains all projects and collections. When you click a collection, the lower box fills with the requests of just that collection. You can then click the upper box to hide it.

Here a quick AI image I created based on that last idea:

Sorry for the quality image, I hope it captures the idea.

Thank you.

[chayglass84]

Very helpful and thoughtful feedback, thanks for the clarification. We're already half done 13.1 (shipping in a few weeks) so I don't see us iterating for that version, but let me take this and some other feedback back, and we'll see what we can do for folks like you.

The "focus on only this" concept is definitely an interesting one.

[Flashky]

Welcome, and thank you again, Cam!

[dj-doMains]

Hey Cam! I would like to echo the "focus on only this" sentiment. I also work on a project with dozens of micro-services and one thing that has always differentiated Insomnia from other API platforms (and the main reason I use it over the others) is the ability to zone in on what I'm working on without the distractions of a giant tree on the left side of my screen.

[AndrewStickler]

I am also disappointed with this tree-based collection UX.

With the previous UX, I could see a tile for each collection, open the one I want and not see all the clutter. Additionally, they would be sorted so that the most recently used were at the start, so were easy to find (I typically work on 3-4 at a time).

With the new UX, I although there are date-based sorting options, they are based on creation date, not 'last used' date, so my most recently used collections are spread randomly throughout the list, making them hard to find. That is compounded by the tree being polluted by the requests in the collection I have just used.

Actually, I have just realised I can still get the old, correctly sorted list of collection tiles by clicking the workspace ('Insomnia'), but the tree of collections is still visible, rather than just showing that collection i am working on. I cannot see what value having all the other collections listed provides.

This all reminds me of the recent issue with the tabs persisting from all collections - perhaps it would be helpful to know what problems the team are trying to solve with these UX changes that seem to annoy users.

[pedro-cf]

Is there a chance we can get this sorted? At least as an option preference ?

[mcturco]

Hi everyone! Thank you so much for your thoughtful feedback on the v13 navigation. I'm Missy, and I work on product design for Insomnia. What I am hearing in this thread has resonated with me, so I'd love to share with you an early prototype of a solution that I am working on to see if it brings the best of both worlds of navigating before and after the update. It is the current plan to bring you a solution like this in v13.2 (subject to change).

Feel free to also book a call with me if you want to chat live: https://calendar.app.google/USQunuVVc5JZUvt47

Otherwise, comment what you think! Thanks again for your transparent and constructive feedback to help us improve.

Screen.Recording.2026-07-16.at.11.00.27.AM.mov

[Flashky]

Hi Missy,

First of all, thank you so much for reaching out and recording a video to share the prototype with us!

Speaking for myself—though I'm sure others might share this view—I personally really like this "sidebar focus" solution. It addresses the clutter perfectly. Also, having a dedicated setting to toggle it on or off is a huge plus, ensuring that both new and long-time users can work exactly how they prefer.

Thank you to the entire Insomnia team (Cam, Missy, and everyone behind the scenes) for listening so closely to our feedback and drafting such a clean solution so quickly. Can't wait to see it in v13.2!

[mcturco]

So glad to hear that this is a good solution for you (and hopefully others on this thread!). The team and I will work on this improvement for v13.2! Thanks again for starting this discussion :)

[AndrewStickler]

I agree, this is much better. Thank you for sharing Missy.

[kdallas]

Hi Missy,

I use the filter a lot. Across several Projects, I may have multiple collections each having multiple endpoints with commonplace keywords like "payments". The biggest issue for me with the new "all projects shown per workspace" view, apart from the aforementioned comments, was that filtering gave me results across all those projects. If your sidebar focus feature isolates filtering to the focused project, this will be a massive UX improvement.

[pedro-cf]

With the addition of the new sidebar, I also noticed a significant performance decrease when a large number of collections are listed.