Roam Research: Understanding the Sidebars in Roam

Roam Research’s left sidebar is built for fast navigation across your knowledge base, while the right sidebar supports side-by-side research without leaving the page you’re working on. On the left, the sidebar starts with Daily Notes, Graph Overview, and All Pages—each serving a different purpose. Daily Notes lets users jump directly to a specific date’s page; Graph Overview shows the connections between pages (initially limited to the pages that exist in the database, such as March 6, 7, and 8); and All Pages provides a searchable list with metadata like word count, dimensions, and last updated/created information.

A key behavioral detail is how navigation changes depending on where you click. Selecting Daily Notes while already on a Daily Notes page doesn’t move the user, but clicking Daily Notes from another page returns to the previously active Daily Notes page. Graph Overview behaves like a map of relationships: with no connections created yet, it only displays the pages currently in the database, and clicking a node takes you to that page. All Pages functions as a broader index, where each entry shows useful attributes—such as the created date tied to the page title for daily pages—making it easier to find and audit content.

For frequent access, Roam includes a favorites mechanism via shortcuts. Users can “star” a page (for example, March 8) to add it to the shortcuts list, then return to it quickly from the sidebar. The interface also updates the top-level icons when viewing Daily Notes: a calendar view appears alongside controls for filtering, opening a graph in the sidebar, and adding the current page to shortcuts. Removing a page from shortcuts is just a second star click, and the workflow is optimized for pages that are revisited multiple times per day or week rather than every daily note.

Roam also supports a focus mode by letting users hide the left sidebar. Clicking the three-line control collapses it so the page fills the screen, then clicking again restores it—useful when writing without distractions but still needing sidebar access for linking and navigation.

Keyboard shortcuts are integrated into this workflow through the help panel (question mark), which lists commands for editing blocks and navigating Roam. One highlighted shortcut toggles the left sidebar visibility: Command + backslash hides and shows the sidebar.

Finally, Roam has a right sidebar that enables multi-page research while staying anchored in the current page. By using Shift + click on a page, users open that page in the right sidebar as an additional tab. Content written in the main page can appear in the right sidebar’s outline (for example, planning lessons on March 6 while working on another page), and users can switch back to earlier pages to review what was captured. Tabs can be reordered by dragging, closed individually with an X, or the entire right sidebar can be dismissed using the three-dots control at the top.