Navigation

Learn about the UI and how to navigate pages in GitBook.

GitBook is split into different sections to make it easier to organize and manage the content you create. Read on to learn more about these sections, and how they help you build an organized and easily searchable content structure.

The sidebar

The sidebar allows you to see and overview of your GitBook organization at a glance. The sidebar contains:

  • Home The Home page allows you to see everything your team is working on at a glance. View open change requests, discussions and comments, recent page edits and more.

  • Organization switcher If you’re a part of multiple organizations, you can see and switch between them here. You can also create a new organization from this menu.

  • Notifications When you’re tagged in a comment or conversation, or when there is important activity in a space you’re working in, you’ll get a notification to show you what’s new.

  • Ask or search Powered by GitBook AI, you can ask questions in natural language, or search through the different spaces and content in your organization.

  • Integrations GitBook integrations supercharge your content, allowing you to embed more into your pages, or add information to your knowledge base from other apps. Head to the integration listing page to see all the available integrations.

  • Snippets With snippets, you can capture complex information from third-party tools. GitBook AI extracts that valuable knowledge within, and documents it for you in seconds.

  • Insights Insights allow you to have a birds-eye view of all of the content you have in your organization.

  • Documentation The documentation section is where you’ll find the collections and spaces you create when adding more content. Head to our content structure section to find out more.

  • Settings You’ll find personal settings and organization settings at the bottom of the sidebar. Here, you can also toggle light/dark mode, or get help from our support team if needed.

  • Trash Deleted spaces appear in the trash. You can restore them for up to seven days — after that, they’re permanently deleted.

Table of contents

The table of contents is a list of pages, links, and groups that make up a space. You’ll find it to the right of the sidebar. It’s specific to the space you’re currently viewing.

From the table of contents you can:

Space header & sub-navigation

The space header contains information about the space you’re currently viewing. It lets you do things like publish and share your space, configure GitHub or GitLab sync, and more.

The space header & sub-navigation may look different depending on the mode you’re currently in. See change requests for more info.

Space header

The space header appears at the top of GitBook when viewing a space. It includes:

  • The space emoji You can choose an emoji for your space, to help you easily identify it in the sidebar.

  • The space name The name of the space that will appear in the sidebar, and your documentation if and when you choose to publish it.

  • Collaborators The avatar of anyone else who’s currently viewing a page in your space, with colored circles to show their cursor color. Click an avatar to jump to the page they’re currently viewing.

  • Git Sync configuration The GitHub and GitLab Sync configuration for your space.

  • The Share menu Allows you to publish and share your space. You can also invite others to collaborate through this menu.

  • The edit button If your space is published, or someone has locked live edits, the Edit button will appear in the space header. It lets you start a new change request to edit content.

Space sub-navigation

The space sub-navigation is located directly beneath the space header, and lets you collaborate with others on your space, customize it’s look, and more. It includes:

  • Change requests Create, update, and delete change requests in your space.

  • Customize Customize the look and feel of your space, including it’s colors, favicon, and more.

  • Integrations Add integrations to your space.

  • File manager Upload and manage files in your space.

  • History View your space’s version history, and rollback to a previous version.

  • Comments See the comments and discussions you and your team have had about the space content.

Page title and description

At the top of each page you can set a title, add an optional emoji, and write a description. The title you use will appear in the table of contents, and forms your page’s URL slug when published.

Your page description can be a maximum of 200 characters long, and will act as the preview text for your page in search engines.

Content editor

The editor is where you can write or insert content in GitBook.

In addition to the multiple content blocks you can insert, you can also embed content from other places, such as integrations.

The Actions menu

The type of actions available will depend on whether you’re in live editing mode, a change request, or in a space with locked edits.

Page options

With page options, you to customize your documentation layout and navigation. You can only access page options if you’re in an editing mode.

Certain changes, such as disabling the table of content, only apply to published documentation and may not be visible in the editor.

Page outline

The page outline sits on the right-hand side of the editor, and makes it easy to jump directly to the section of the page you’re looking for.

Any Heading 1 or Heading 2 blocks you add to the page will appear in the page outline listed here.

The page outline will appear in your published site, too. You can toggle it on or off in the Page options side panel.

If you can’t see the right-hand column of the app, it may be because your browser window is less than 1430 pixels wide. Your browser window needs to be at least 1430 pixels wide to see and use the page outline.

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