Have you ever found yourself opening a lot of apps on your monitors, and one of them is WhatsApp? You keep asking why WhatsApp doesn't let you hide the sidebar because you need more space. So, you have to shrink the browser window, and the sidebar takes up too much room, leaving you with insufficient space in the chat area.
I built this little Chrome extension for myself that allows me to hide it or switch to condensed mode. When they don't do it, we do it ourselves. I hope that if you're like me and facing the same issue, this will definitely help you.
By the way, my name is UncleCode, author of Crawl4ai.
- Default mode: The standard WhatsApp Web layout
- Condensed mode: A space-saving mode with a narrower sidebar and compact chat list
- Hidden mode: Completely hides the sidebar for maximum chat space
The extension adds a toggle button to your WhatsApp Web interface. Click it to cycle through the three modes:
- Default → Condensed → Hidden → Default
I'll be publishing this extension on the Chrome Web Store soon! Stay tuned for a simple one-click install.
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Clone this repository:
git clone https://github.com/unclecode/whatsapp-sidebar-toggler.git -
Open Chrome and navigate to
chrome://extensions/ -
Enable "Developer mode" (toggle in the top-right corner)
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Click "Load unpacked" and select the cloned directory
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Open WhatsApp Web and enjoy your new toggle button!
Coming soon
This extension doesn't collect any data. It simply modifies the WhatsApp Web interface locally in your browser. The code is open source, so you can verify this yourself!
Feel free to open an issue or submit a pull request if you have any suggestions or improvements!
Made with ☕ and 💻 by UncleCode