[Bug]: File navigator pane in the sidebar can't be resized

[munael]

Before submitting

• I searched existing issues and did not find a duplicate.
• I included enough detail to reproduce or investigate the problem.

Area

apps/desktop

Steps to reproduce

1. Start a thread inside any repo with some files.
2. Press Ctrl-P to open the file picker, and pick any file.
3. The sidebar on the right will open. The file is visible and next to it is a navigator pane that is, on a mac air m4, a bit too wide.
4. Try to resize the navigator pane only. The resize handle is missing.

Expected behavior

You can resize the navigation pane's width by clicking and dragging.

Actual behavior

Cannot resize.

Impact

Cosmetic issue

Version or commit

0.0.41-nightly.20260913.1646

Environment

macOS 26.3

Logs or stack traces

Screenshots, recordings, or supporting files

No response

Workaround

No response

[juliusmarminge]

Thanks for the report — this is a real gap, but it is a missing resize control rather than a desktop regression.

What I found

Opening a file (⌘/Ctrl-P) renders FilePreviewPanel in the right sidebar. The file sits on the left; the navigator is FileBrowserPanel in a sibling column. That column is hard-coded:

w-[min(22rem,46%)] min-w-64

So it is 256–352px (or 46% of the row on a narrow panel) with no drag handle. That matches “a bit too wide on a MacBook Air” and “cannot resize the navigator only.”

This lives in web (apps/web/src/components/files/FilePreviewPanel.tsx). Desktop just hosts the same UI. The width has been static since the file browser landed in #3087 — not a recent breakage. You can still hide the explorer (folder-tree toggle in the file chrome) or resize the whole right panel; those are the current workarounds.

The shared resize hook (useResizableWidth + RightPanelResizeHandle) is only wired to the outer preview/sidebar chrome. Diff and PR file trees use the same kind of fixed-width aside.

Related

• feat(web): resize file tree sidebar in right panel #8317 (feat(web): resize file tree sidebar in right panel) already tried this and was closed unmerged. Review notes there are still the implementation traps: do not let the min width collapse to 0, keep hook clamps and CSS caps in one owner, and re-clamp when the preview row gets narrower.
• fix(web): unify panel resizing and retain final drag width #11529 unified outer panel resizing. It does not add an inner explorer splitter.

Suggested fix

Add a left-edge handle on the explorer column, persist the width, and clamp against both a sensible min/max and the current panel width so a remembered size cannot eat the file view. Optional follow-up: the same treatment for the diff / PR trees.

Classifying as a low-severity enhancement. No extra repro info needed.