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Side navigation
<gcds-side-nav>

Also called: sidebar menu, lefthand nav, vertical navigation.

A side navigation is a vertical list of page links on the left side of the screen.

  • GitHub
  • Figma

Side navigation component preview

Check out side navigation use cases to see if they fit the problem you’re solving for.

Problems side navigation solves

It’s optional to use side navigation in products for:

  • Making second and third level navigation visible in information architectures that have 1-3 levels of navigation.
  • Presenting a consistent navigation across pages with a large number of top level items, like technical documentation with broad category sets.
  • Enabling navigation between various categories or sections so a person can scan and compare like objects in a set.
  • Providing ready access to global navigation between deep navigation structures.

Top navigation for straightforward navigation of simple hierarchies.

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2025-10-01