ComfyUI-N-Sidebar: a persistent side panel for ComfyUI

What the sidebar adds to ComfyUI

ComfyUI-N-Sidebar is a simple sidebar for ComfyUI, and the project states the motivation plainly: for what I know nobody did it, so I did it, followed by the slightly resigned Maybe you don't need it. I need it.

The panel gives the node list a permanent home in the interface. ComfyUI's node search is a dialog you open and dismiss, and once you have a few hundred nodes installed, finding the right one is a repeated cost. The sidebar keeps a list on screen, with a search field inside it, and adds the things a persistent list can do that a modal cannot.

The documented feature set covers several distinct areas. Drag and drop nodes into the canvas is one, and pinning your favourite node is another. There is search within your nodes and search within categories, and separately a fuzzy search feature that is enabled by default and can be disabled in the settings, implemented with fts_fuzzy_match.js by Forrest Smith. Categories and the sidebar itself can be expanded and collapsed, and nodes can be reordered.

Custom categories let you group the node list your own way, and the update history describes a subcategory view for the node panel, an option to view folders inside the workflow panel, and the ability to move workflows between custom categories from the context menu.

The users are ComfyUI power users, people with many custom nodes installed, and anyone who has found themselves scrolling a node list looking for the same loader every time.

Installation, the folder name requirement and updating

Installation is a clone into the ComfyUI custom_nodes directory. The documented command is git clone https://github.com/Nuked88/ComfyUI-N-Sidebar.git, run from the custom_nodes folder.

One condition is stated in bold in the documentation and it is not optional: if you choose a different method to install the ComfyUI-N-Sidebar, you must ensure that you rename the folder to ComfyUI-N-Sidebar. The code looks for that exact directory name, so a renamed or differently cased folder is a silent failure rather than an error message.

Updating is a pull from inside the cloned directory, for example custom_nodes/ComfyUI-N-Sidebar, and the command is git pull.

Uninstalling means deleting the ComfyUI-N-Sidebar folder from custom_nodes.

The requirements are minimal, which is worth noting. The requirements.txt file in the repository contains exactly one package, aiofiles, and the packaging metadata in pyproject.toml declares the project as comfyui-n-sidebar at version 1.6.5:

[project]
name = "comfyui-n-sidebar"
description = "A simple sidebar for ComfyUI."
version = "1.6.5"
license = { file = "LICENSE" }

The pyproject also carries the Comfy Registry metadata, with the publisher id nuked and the display name ComfyUI-N-Sidebar, so the extension is discoverable through the registry as well as through a clone.

The repository root holds an __init__.py, which is what ComfyUI looks for when it enumerates custom nodes, an app/ directory, and the images/ directory that the documentation screenshots come from.

Settings, the settings.json file and the keyboard shortcuts

The most important settings are stored in custom_nodes/ComfyUI-N-Sidebar/settings.json, and the documentation points out that most configuration settings ended up in that file after a rewrite.

The settings can be reached from the interface or by keyboard. The documented shortcuts are:

- `Alt+Z` or `Option+Z` to toggle show and hide the sidebar - `Alt+X` or `Option+X` to focus on the search field - `Alt+G` or `Option+G` to open the settings

The Mac variants are there because the sidebar is aimed at people who work in ComfyUI for hours, and the toggle shortcut is the one you reach for when you want the canvas back.

The settings panel itself is configurable in ways that matter for daily use. There is an Auto Show option that can be disabled, a Show at Startup option that lets the sidebar open with ComfyUI if it is not in fixed mode, left and right positioning options, and a Soft or Factory Reset of the configuration. There is also the choice between the default node ordering in ComfyUI and the alphabetical one.

The settings panel was redesigned in the 04-09-2024 update, and the update list also records the ability to import and export your settings, which is the feature that matters if you run ComfyUI on more than one machine.

Pointing it at your workflows folder

Workflow management is a separate feature from the node panel, and it needs one explicit configuration step before it works.

The procedure is three steps. Open the settings with the gear icon or with the shortcut. In WORKFLOW PATHS, set the folder path to where your workflows are located, and if you want more than one, put one folder path per line. Then restart ComfyUI.

The restart requirement is the part that catches people out, and it is a reasonable design. The panel reads the filesystem on startup rather than watching it, which keeps the implementation simple and avoids a file watcher on every workflow directory.

Once configured, the workflow panel supports renaming workflows, removing them and categorising them, and it can preview a workflow by showing the list of nodes used, with that preview disabled by default. The template support added later in 2024 does something similar for templates, and the author notes that rename and delete were deliberately not enabled for templates because they conflicted with the TemplateManager.

That last detail is a good illustration of how this project is built. It sits alongside other ComfyUI extensions rather than replacing them, and when two features collide, the author disables one rather than fight for the same action.

The model downloader and the experimental features

The 04-09-2024 update added the ability to directly download CIVITAI models into chosen folders, and the list of what it covers is long: Checkpoint, Textual Inversion, Hypernetwork, Aesthetic Gradient, LORA, LoCon, DoRA, Controlnet, Upscaler, Motion Module, VAE, Poses, Wildcards and Workflows.

The same update added three features the author marks as experimental. You can embed ComfyUI's native bar within the n-sidebar, so the extension wraps the host interface rather than sitting beside it. There is a small console, described as useful if you do not have direct access to the machine, and the documentation tells you how to remove it by deleting the terminal folder within ComfyUI-N-Sidebar/app/panels. And there is the ability to edit the layout of the bar, which the author says is highly unstable and its use may lead to unexpected behaviors.

The console deserves a note. A text console embedded in a web UI that can run commands on the host machine is a genuinely different security posture from a panel that only lists nodes, and the way the documentation presents it is as a convenience for people working on a remote machine. If you expose your ComfyUI instance to a network, that panel is worth thinking about before you leave it enabled.

The update history also shows a pattern worth reading for expectations. The 01-08-2024 entry explains a browser cache problem that was breaking the sidebar for a lot of people, and the fix was to rename the CSS file so browsers would load the new one, with the author adding that if this did not fix the issue they were not sure what would.

Where ComfyUI-N-Sidebar is the wrong tool

The first limit is the release model. The repository publishes no GitHub releases, so there is no version stream, and the version number only appears in the pyproject.toml as 1.6.5. The last push was on 2026-10-01, so the tree is current, but a user installing by clone is tracking whatever is on the branch.

The second is the extension model itself. A ComfyUI custom node runs inside the host application, so anything that changes the host's interface can break it. The update history records exactly this class of problem: the sidebar class was renamed to prevent a conflict with the comfyui-search-navigation node, and the 21-04-2024 entry says the code was rewritten to ensure compatibility with future updates. That is a reactive posture, and it means a ComfyUI release can require a matching sidebar update.

The third is the migration risk in the settings. The 04-06-2024 entry notes that custom categories in the workflow panel are migrated to a new system on first start after a full rewrite, that you may need to refresh the page more than once to see them, and that a backup of settings.json is created before the migration in case anything goes wrong. The 31-03-2024 entry mentions a migration from cookies to localstorage. So the settings file is not a stable format, and a user who has spent time organising categories may find them moved.

The fourth is that this is one person's project. The tone of the documentation, with the author noting they hope they did not break anything and that they added some other bugs for sure, is honest and friendly, and it also tells you the compatibility burden sits with one maintainer.

Compare that with ComfyUI's own built-in search and the separate TemplateManager extension. The difference in approach is that the built-in search needs no install and no maintenance but has no persistent panel, while this project gives you the panel and the organising features at the cost of being an extension that has to keep up with the host. If you only need faster search, the built-in dialog is the safer dependency.

Licence, compatibility notes and what to check first

ComfyUI-N-Sidebar is released under the MIT licence, with the licence declared in the pyproject.toml as a file reference to the LICENSE file at the repository root. The MIT terms are permissive, so a fork or a redistribution inside a workflow bundle is straightforward, provided the copyright notice and licence text travel with copies. Read the LICENSE file yourself for the exact terms.

The most useful compatibility note in the whole documentation is the caching one. On 01-08-2024 the author explains that a lot of people were having trouble with a CSS class change because the browser kept loading the old CSS file from disk instead of the new one, and that renaming the CSS file was supposed to force the browser to load the new one. If you install and the sidebar looks wrong, that is the first thing to check, and hard refreshing the browser is the first thing to try.

Two other details are worth carrying into your setup. The sidebar can be positioned left or right, and it can be set to hide itself automatically, which matters if you use it on a laptop screen. And the node ordering can follow ComfyUI's default or be alphabetical, which is a small quality of life setting that depends on whether you know your node names by heart.

What to verify first is short. Clone it into custom_nodes under the exact name ComfyUI-N-Sidebar and restart ComfyUI. Check that the sidebar appears and that the search field takes focus with the shortcut. Then set the workflow paths in settings.json and restart again, and only then start reorganising categories, because a settings migration during your first start is the step most likely to move things you had arranged.

Editorial conclusion

ComfyUI-N-Sidebar fits a ComfyUI user whose node list has grown past what the default interface can scan, and who wants search, pinning and workflow organisation in a panel that stays in place. It does not fit a team that wants a stable, supported extension, since the repository publishes no releases and several of the documented features are labelled experimental by the author. Before adopting it, clone it into custom_nodes under the exact folder name ComfyUI-N-Sidebar, since the code looks for that name, set the workflow paths in settings.json and restart ComfyUI, and try the sidebar on a machine where a browser cache is under your control, because a stale CSS file was the cause of a documented class of complaints.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. License: MIT
3. Nuked88/ComfyUI-N-Sidebar on GitHub
4. README