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.

First install the PyPI package:

pip install mkdocs-toggle-sidebar-plugin

Add something like the following to your mkdocs.yml:

plugins:
- search
- toggle-sidebar

The plugin adds the following key bindings:

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.

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
    button_toggle_both_tooltip: Toggle Navigation and Table of Contents
    button_toggle_nav_tooltip: Toggle Navigation
    button_toggle_toc_tooltip: Toggle Table of Contents
    button_toggle_icon: '<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 24 24"><path d="M3 6h18v2H3V6m0 5h18v2H3v-2m0 5h18v2H3v-2Z"></path></svg>'

The following options exist:

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.

You can set a custom icon for the button, using the button_toggle_icon configuration. The icon should be a 24px square SVG file.

The tooltip shown when hovering over the button can also be changed. Depending on which value you set in toggle_button, a different option is used:

• If toggle_button is all, then button_toggle_both_tooltip is used.
• If toggle_button is navigation, then button_toggle_nav_tooltip is used.
• If toggle_button is toc, then button_toggle_toc_tooltip is used.

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.

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.

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

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

• Added button_toggle_both_tooltip, button_toggle_nav_tooltip, button_toggle_toc_tooltip and button_toggle_icon options for customizing the toggle button (see #12)

• Fixed toggle button not shown in certain window dimensions in Material theme (see #11)

• Fixed sidebar not hidden in material's blog mode (see #9). Thank you @ZnPdCo for finding and fixing the issue.

• 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

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

• 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.

• 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.

• Added support for mkdocs and readthedocs theme.

• Prototype with mkdocs-material implementation.