Is there a standard way to hide a story from the sidebar in Storybook while keeping its URL accessible?

[apenab]

Hello Storybook team & community 👋

I’m working with Storybook and I have a requirement: I want some stories (components) to be accessible via direct URL but not visible in the sidebar navigation.

I’ve found a few ad-hoc approaches (for example, applying CSS to hide sidebar items, or using the sidebar filters API) but I’m wondering if there is a documented/official “standard” way in Storybook to achieve this.

In particular:
• Does Storybook provide a built-in parameter, tag or config option to mark a story as “hidden in sidebar but still loadable”?
• Are there any best-practice or recommended patterns (preferably version-agnostic) for this use-case?
• Are there any known caveats (e.g., impact on accessibility, history/navigation, performance) when hiding stories this way?

I appreciate any guidance, suggestions or pointers to docs / issues. Thanks in advance!

[dosubot[bot]]

Hi @apenab! I'm Dosu and I’m helping the storybook team.

There isn't a built-in or officially documented way in Storybook to hide individual stories from the sidebar while keeping them accessible via direct URL. The sidebar lists all stories by default, and while you can control grouping and labeling, there’s no parameter or config option to mark a story as “hidden in sidebar but still loadable” docs.

Some community discussions suggest using tags and tag filtering to selectively hide stories from the sidebar, but this is not an official or version-agnostic solution discussion. Enabling docsMode hides all stories from the sidebar, but not selectively. Hiding the entire sidebar via showSidebar is possible, but that affects all stories and can make navigation impossible unless you provide an alternative docs.

If you use workarounds like CSS or sidebar filters, be aware of potential accessibility and navigation issues, since users may not be able to discover or navigate to hidden stories without direct links.

If you want to explore tag filtering further, see the tag filtering documentation for more details.

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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[apenab]

Thx THx a lot.