[Feature] General screen space optimization — sidebar, Space header banner, and filter panel together leave too little room for the actual photos, especially on smaller and medium screens

[photoserver-pro]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

On smaller and medium sized screens, several UI elements together take up a large portion of the available screen space, leaving comparatively little room for the actual photo grid, which is the core content people come to Noodle for. This is a general space optimization request, not about a single element. The main navigation sidebar is one example, but the same screenshot also shows a large header/banner area for a Space, a full width hero image with the Space name, description, and photo count overlaid, taking up a large vertical portion of the screen, plus the Filter panel, all present and expanded at the same time by default.

The sidebar behavior in particular is also inconsistent across screen sizes and orientations, which suggests the underlying logic isn't a deliberate design decision but more a side effect of fixed width thresholds:

• On a 10 inch iPad in Portrait mode, the left navigation sidebar is automatically hidden.
• On the same 10 inch iPad in Landscape mode, the left navigation sidebar is shown, taking up space even though the use case (browsing photos) hasn't changed, only the orientation.
• On a 12 inch iPad, the left navigation sidebar is always shown, in both orientations, it never auto-hides at all.

Describe the solution you'd like

Rather than treating each of these elements independently, the overall design goal should be maximizing the actual photo viewing area, especially on tablets and other smaller/medium screens. Concretely:

• Sidebar: offer a flexible, user controlled approach, a "pin" option to keep it permanently visible, and an "auto-hide"/overlay option where it only appears on demand (e.g. via a menu icon or swipe), consistently across tablet sizes and orientations rather than an implicit width threshold.
• Filter panel: already collapsible via its own close button, which is good, but consider making it an overlay rather than permanently reducing the content column width whenever it is open.
• Space header/banner: the large hero banner (full width image with overlaid title, description, photo count) takes up a lot of vertical space purely for branding/context that a returning user has usually already seen. Consider a more compact default size, or a "sticky compact header" pattern that automatically shrinks once the user scrolls into the actual photo grid, rather than always reserving that much space at full size.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Manually collapsing the Filter panel via its own close button already helps somewhat, but there is no equivalent way to collapse the main navigation sidebar or reduce the Space header banner, and the current sidebar behavior differs unpredictably between device sizes and orientations rather than following one clear, consistent rule.

Impact

Photos are the actual content people come to Noodle for. On tablets in particular, a device otherwise well suited for browsing a photo library, a large and inconsistently applied amount of screen space is used by navigation chrome, branding, and filters rather than content. Optimizing all of these together, not just the sidebar, would make a meaningfully larger difference in how much of the screen is actually usable for looking at photos, and would make the layout behave consistently and predictably across screen sizes and orientations.

Screenshots

1. Example: 10 inch iPad in landscape orientation, sidebar, large Space header banner, and Filter panel all visible and expanded simultaneously, leaving only a narrow column with room for about 3 photos per row despite a very large photo library.

[LoPeraa]

Part of the problem could be addressed by fully hiding the main sidebar when entering a Space, similar to what's already the case for Albums (sidebar hidden, etc.). That said, this would only cover the Space use case.

Also, you're right that having a responsive version of the sidebar for smaller screens would be great. Google Photos handles this well: the sidebar shrinks down to show only icons, and expands back to full size on hover.

Enregistrement.de.l.ecran.2026-08-02.a.20.45.49.mov