Setting to use compact (slim) thread rows for all sidebar sections

[spkaplan]

Problem
In the flat sidebar, Pinned, Active and working threads always render as tall "card" rows. The content box is a fixed h-[4.875rem] (about 78px at the default 16px interface font size). Only Settled and snoozed threads get the compact "slim" row. With many parallel threads, the sidebar fits only a handful of rows on screen.

What I checked

• Nightly 0.0.46-nightly.20261007.2787.
• There is no setting for row density or row variant. In Sidebar.tsx the variant comes from the section: isCard = section === "active" || section === "pinned" || section === "working".
• Custom themes are color-only.
• The interface font size (12–20) is the only lever. It shrinks all UI text, not only the sidebar rows.

Proposal
Add a sidebar setting such as "Compact thread rows". When on, it renders the slim row variant for every section. A three-way density option (comfortable, compact, dense) would also work.

Alternatives considered

• Lowering the interface font size. This affects the whole app.
• Settling threads to get slim rows. This changes thread state just to change layout.

[joshka]

I don't think this should be a setting - better as a visible toggle button as it's something you may reasonably want to toggle on and off as needed.

[grahamfarrar]

+1. The pain is the active and working threads specifically. Settled rows are already slim, but the threads I'm actually juggling are the ones stuck in tall card rows.

A concrete reference for what compact active rows could look like is the Claude desktop app's Code sidebar:

• One line per thread: a small status dot and the title. No project label, branch or footer icons on the row.
• Threads grouped under a plain project header (project name, plus a + for a new thread in that project), so the project name appears once instead of on every row.
• Roughly 3x the threads fit on screen compared with today's card rows.

My use case: about 8 parallel long-lived threads, all active at once in one project (one per home-automation service). With card rows, only about 6 fit on a laptop screen, and every row repeats "Personal". Working/waiting/done status can stay as the dot or a short right-aligned label.

This overlaps with the grouping ideas in #17795 and #16403. Slim active rows plus project headers together would cover both.

[GokulPraveenB]

+1 to this proposal — One line per thread, similar to Claude Desktop. It's minimal and clean and quite readable. Current sidebar is too bloated.

Can we make it a setting to disable / turn-off visibility of project title, branch, relative time etc. So one can customize how they want it.

[diogovalada]

+1. This is the reason I still use the legacy sidebar on desktop. With the card rows only a handful of active threads fit on screen, and when a thread has no branch the third line of the card holds only the provider icon, so a lot of the row is blank space.

The one-line row already exists for settled and snoozed threads, so an option to use it for every section would solve this for me. I agree with @joshka that it's something you'd want to switch quickly. A single "View" menu in the sidebar header with a "Compact rows" checkbox, or a command palette entry, would allow that without adding several header buttons.

I saw that compact rows were merged and then removed in #11685 without a stated reason. Could a maintainer share what the concern was? That would help shape a version you'd be willing to accept.

[raiscan]

I have a narrower, pinned-only use case for this.

When working on multiple projects at once, sidebar space is at a premium. When I pin a thread, I already know what it is and want to keep an eye on it. The icon and title are enough to identify it; always showing the model, branch, and project name takes space that could show more active sessions.

The scope I would like to agree on is:

• One opt-in toggle for compact pinned rows, off by default. Heightmaxxing is opt-in.
• Reuse the existing slim layout for pinned threads, retaining normal title emphasis, full-color project icons, live status, PR badges, and thread actions. Model, branch, and project details remain available in the existing tooltip.
• Keep thread lifecycle and ordering intact. This controls presentation, rather than settling or snoozing work to make it smaller.
• Cover the current web/desktop sidebar. Other sections and the legacy sidebar keep their existing layouts.

There is a concrete prototype in my fork: e5f866060c. Its control is currently Settings → General → Organization → Compact pinned rows; I am open to maintainer direction on placement. It uses the existing client-settings persistence, search, and reset paths.

I checked the default-off behavior, 78px → 36px row height, persistence after reload, restoring the full card, and normal title/icon emphasis in light and dark themes. Focused tests cover settings decoding/reset and drag spacing at 100% and 125% scale. Before/after screenshots are ready for a PR.

Would maintainers support this pinned-only, default-off direction and scope? Alternatively, would you consider it eligible under the focused configuration exception in CONTRIBUTING? I am asking before opening an upstream PR, given that #11685 removed the broader compact sidebar.

Prepared with OpenAI Codex GPT-6.1 (gpt-6.1-sol), using the Codex harness in T3 Code.

[joshka]

one thing to avoid on heightmaxxing is the problem that codex app has. It sometimes has a row, sometimes doesn't so the row height tends to flicker between two values. This is pretty janky.