Sidebar Navigation

A well-organized sidebar is key to a good documentation as it is one of the main ways users will navigate your site. Starlight provides a complete set of options to customize your sidebar layout and content.

Default sidebar

By default, Starlight will automatically generate a sidebar based on the filesystem structure of your documentation, using each file’s title property as the sidebar entry.

For example, given the following file structure:

The following sidebar will be automatically generated:

Learn more about autogenerated sidebars in the autogenerated links section.

Add links and link groups

To configure your sidebar links and groups of links (within a collapsible header), use the starlight.sidebar property in astro.config.mjs.

By combining links and groups, you can create a wide variety of sidebar layouts.

Internal links

Add a link to a page in src/content/docs/ using an object with the slug property. The linked page’s title will be used as the label by default.

For example, with the following configuration:

starlight({
  sidebar: [
    { slug: 'constellations/andromeda' },
    { slug: 'constellations/orion' },
  ],
});

And the following file structure:

The following sidebar will be generated:

To override the values inferred from a linked page’s frontmatter, you can add label, translations, and attrs properties.

See “Customizing autogenerated links” for more details about controlling the sidebar appearance from page frontmatter.

Shorthand for internal links

Internal links can also be specified by providing only a string for the page slug as a shorthand.

For example, the following configuration is equivalent to the configuration above, which used slug:

starlight({
  sidebar: ['constellations/andromeda', 'constellations/orion'],
});

Other links

Add a link to an external or non-docs page using an object with label and link properties.

starlight({
  sidebar: [
    // A link to a non-docs page on this site.
    { label: 'Meteor Store', link: '/shop/' },
    // An external link to the NASA website.
    { label: 'NASA', link: 'https://www.nasa.gov/' },
  ],
});

The configuration above generates the following sidebar:

Groups

You can add structure to your sidebar by grouping related links together under a collapsible heading. Groups can contain both links and other sub-groups.

Add a group using an object with label and items properties. The label will be used as the heading for the group. Add links or subgroups to the items array.

starlight({
  sidebar: [
    // A group of links labelled "Constellations".
    {
      label: 'Constellations',
      items: [
        'constellations/carina',
        'constellations/centaurus',
        // A nested group of links for seasonal constellations.
        {
          label: 'Seasonal',
          items: [
            'constellations/andromeda',
            'constellations/orion',
            'constellations/ursa-minor',
          ],
        },
      ],
    },
  ],
});

The configuration above generates the following sidebar:

Autogenerated links

Starlight can automatically generate links in your sidebar based on a directory of your docs. This is helpful when you do not want to manually enter each sidebar item in a group.

By default, pages are sorted in alphabetical order according to the file id.

Add autogenerated links using an object with the autogenerate property. Your autogenerate configuration must specify the directory to use for sidebar entries. For example, with the following configuration:

starlight({
  sidebar: [
    {
      label: 'Constellations',
      // Autogenerate links for the 'constellations' directory.
      items: [{ autogenerate: { directory: 'constellations' } }],
    },
  ],
});

And the following file structure:

The following sidebar will be generated:

Customizing autogenerated links in frontmatter

Use the sidebar frontmatter field in individual pages to customize autogenerated links.

Sidebar frontmatter options allow you to set a custom label, use custom attributes, add a badge to a link, hide a link from the sidebar, or define a custom sort weighting.

src/content/docs/example.md

---
title: My page
sidebar:
  # Set a custom label for the link
  label: Custom sidebar label
  # Set a custom order for the link (lower numbers are displayed higher up)
  order: 2
  # Add a badge to the link
  badge:
    text: New
    variant: tip
---

A group with autogenerated links including a page with the frontmatter above will generate the following sidebar:

Note

The sidebar frontmatter configuration is only used for autogenerated links and docs links defined with the slug property. It does not apply to links defined with the link property.

Badges

Links and groups can also include a badge property to display a badge next to their label.

starlight({
  sidebar: [
    {
      label: 'Stars',
      items: [
        // A link with a "Supergiant" badge.
        {
          slug: 'stars/persei',
          badge: 'Supergiant',
        },
      ],
    },
    // A group with an "Outdated" badge.
    {
      label: 'Moons',
      badge: 'Outdated',
      items: [{ autogenerate: { directory: 'moons' } }],
    },
  ],
});

The configuration above generates the following sidebar:

Badge variants and custom styling

Customize the badge styling using an object with text, variant, and class properties.

The text represents the content to display (e.g. “New”). By default, the badge will use the accent color of your site. To use a built-in badge style, set the variant property to one of the following values: note, tip, danger, caution or success.

Optionally, you can create a custom badge style by setting the class property to a CSS class name.

starlight({
  sidebar: [
    {
      label: 'Stars',
      items: [
        // A link with a yellow "Stub" badge.
        {
          slug: 'stars/sirius',
          badge: { text: 'Stub', variant: 'caution' },
        },
      ],
    },
  ],
});

The configuration above generates the following sidebar:

Learn more about using and customizing badges.

Custom HTML attributes

Links can also include an attrs property to add custom HTML attributes to the link element.

In the following example, attrs is used to add a target="_blank" attribute, so that the link opens in a new tab, and to apply a custom style attribute to italicize the link label:

starlight({
  sidebar: [
    {
      label: 'Resources',
      items: [
        // An external link to the NASA website opening in a new tab.
        {
          label: 'NASA',
          link: 'https://www.nasa.gov/',
          attrs: { target: '_blank', style: 'font-style: italic' },
        },
      ],
    },
  ],
});

The configuration above generates the following sidebar:

Custom HTML attributes for autogenerated links

Customize HTML attributes of all autogenerated links by defining the attrs property in the autogenerate configuration. Individual pages can specify custom attributes using the sidebar.attrs frontmatter field which will be merged with the autogenerate.attrs configuration.

For example, with the following configuration:

starlight({
  sidebar: [
    {
      autogenerate: {
        // Autogenerate links for the 'constellations' directory.
        directory: 'constellations',
        // Italicize all autogenerated link labels.
        attrs: { style: 'font-style: italic' },
      },
    },
  ],
});

And the following file structure:

The following sidebar will be generated with all autogenerated links italicized:

Internationalization

Use the translations property on link and group entries to translate the link or group label for each supported language by specifying a BCP-47 language tag, e.g. "en", "ar", or "zh-CN", as the key and the translated label as the value. The label property will be used for the default locale and for languages without a translation.

starlight({
  sidebar: [
    {
      label: 'Constellations',
      translations: {
        'pt-BR': 'Constelações',
      },
      items: [
        {
          label: 'Andromeda',
          translations: {
            'pt-BR': 'Andrômeda',
          },
          slug: 'constellations/andromeda',
        },
        {
          label: 'Scorpius',
          translations: {
            'pt-BR': 'Escorpião',
          },
          slug: 'constellations/scorpius',
        },
      ],
    },
  ],
});

Browsing the documentation in Brazilian Portuguese will generate the following sidebar:

Internationalization with internal links

Internal links will automatically use translated page titles from content frontmatter by default:

starlight({
  sidebar: [
    {
      label: 'Constellations',
      translations: {
        'pt-BR': 'Constelações',
      },
      items: [
        { slug: 'constellations/andromeda' },
        { slug: 'constellations/scorpius' },
      ],
    },
  ],
});

Browsing the documentation in Brazilian Portuguese will generate the following sidebar:

In multilingual sites, the value of slug does not include the language portion of the URL. For example, if you have pages at en/intro and pt-br/intro, the slug is intro when configuring the sidebar.

Internationalization with badges

For badges, the text property can be a string, or for multilingual sites, an object with values for each different locale. When using the object form, the keys must be BCP-47 tags (e.g. en, ar, or zh-CN):

starlight({
  sidebar: [
    {
      label: 'Constellations',
      translations: {
        'pt-BR': 'Constelações',
      },
      items: [
        {
          slug: 'constellations/andromeda',
          badge: {
            text: {
              en: 'New',
              'pt-BR': 'Novo',
            },
          },
        },
      ],
    },
  ],
});

Browsing the documentation in Brazilian Portuguese will generate the following sidebar:

Collapsing groups

Groups of links can be collapsed by default by setting the collapsed property to true.

starlight({
  sidebar: [
    {
      label: 'Constellations',
      // Collapse the group by default.
      collapsed: true,
      items: ['constellations/andromeda', 'constellations/orion'],
    },
  ],
});

The configuration above generates the following sidebar:

Autogenerated subgroups can also be collapsed by default by setting the autogenerate.collapsed property to true.

starlight({
  sidebar: [
    {
      label: 'Constellations',
      items: [
        {
          autogenerate: {
            directory: 'constellations',
            // Collapse autogenerated subgroups by default.
            collapsed: true,
          },
        },
      ],
    },
  ],
});

The configuration above generates the following sidebar: