P: Lightroom Classic: Panel Scroll Bar / Close annoyance

Report · Aug 17, 2015

The panel scroll bar and close panel bar arrow section are annoyingly close together. On a 4K monitor (and possibly lower resolutions) the panel scroll bar is so thin that it's easy to press the close button instead. This is frustrating when trying to select the appropriate tool and you just keep closing/unclosing the panels. Is it possible to either increase the size of the scroll bar, be able to lock the panel in place or a mix of the two. Cheers,

Report · Apr 18, 2023

There sewriously needs to be a 'lock' option. I'm adding my voice to the "25", which I'm sure isn't greater because it took me ages to find this thread as I wasn't sure how to ask for what I wanted.
With so many ways to hide the panels, can't you just lose the arrows completely?!
Soooooooooooooooooooooo frustrating.....

Report · Apr 18, 2023

There seriously needs to be a 'lock' option. I'm adding my voice to the "25", which I'm sure isn't greater because it took me ages to find this thread as I wasn't sure how to ask for what I wanted. For Wacom users, it's particularly annoying.
With so many ways to hide the panels, can't you just lose the arrows completely?!
Soooooooooooooooooooooo frustrating.....

Report · Apr 18, 2023

I agree!! This problem really needs to get fixed. Is anyone at Adobe listening. For whoever is responsible for this part of Lightroom I have a message. I hope that you have some software you use every day and it has a bug in it that drives you crazy and you can't get it fixed. Take that!!

Report · Apr 28, 2023

Dennis- it's been 5 years since you made this post and locking the panel still hasn't been added. Like you, I use a Wacom tablet and I hit the button that hides the panel constantly and it drives me crazy. I feel very seen reading your post and I look forward to the day when they finally fix this issue.

Report · Jun 13, 2023

I know that this question might be a bit picky, as it's not like this issue prevents me from actually using Lightroom and improving my images in it, but it certainly is an annoyance. Is there any way to lock the right panel? The problem is that there is basically no space between the scroll bar and that little arrow that collapses the panel, so I find myself accidentlycollapsing it and then expending it over and over again, which just disrupts my workflow. It seems to me like this is a design flaw, so I would hope that there is some way of dealing with it. Thank you.

Report · Jun 13, 2023

You don't need to touch or even go near the scroll bar. Simply place your cursor over any of the panels, then use the mouse scroll-wheel or laptop touchpad to scroll the panels up/down.

Report · Jun 13, 2023

I don't know if it can be locked, but I use "Solo Mode" so I generally don't have to scroll up and down much.

See:

https://photofocus.com/software/quick-tip-stay-organized-with-lightroom-solo-mode/ and scroll down to "Working in Solo Mode"

Report · Jun 13, 2023

It’s not necessarily a design flaw, but it is a common issue in many professional photo, video, and audio applications (Adobe and non-Adobe) where we want to see so much information and options on the screen that things are necessarily packed together tight and are very tiny.

The other replies hint at why. It’s not that window scrolling isn’t important, it’s just that since the 1980s scroll bars have gone way down in size and priority as alternate scrolling methods became more numerous and popular. Freeing up room to show more options and info.

In Lightroom Classic, speaking only for myself, my #1 way to scroll is with a trackpad swipe gesture, the #2 way is keyboard shortcuts, and the #3 way is the mouse scroll wheel, if I connected one. In some views such as grid, I’ll also use the Page Up and Page Down keys. None of those methods require touching the scroll bars.

Using the keyboard shortcuts (shown under Window > Panels), if I need to go back up to the Basic panel in the Develop module, I often prefer to press the Command-1 shortcut on my Mac rather than take more time to move the pointer over to the scroll bar and drag it manually. And I know Command-7 scrolls instantly to Transform, again saving time. The right panel shortcuts are Ctrl-0 through 9 (Windows) or Command-0 through 9 (macOS), and work in all modules, although some have fewer panels.

Report · Jun 13, 2023

Ha -- I didn't even realize that. Yes, that DOES remove to touch the scroll bar, which is certainly helpful.

But I still strongly feel that there should be a way to lock that panel!

Report · Jun 13, 2023

I appreciate your response, but can't say I agree with it. Everything you say is all well and good, but there's no reason that people can't be able to see lots of information and options on the screen AND there be a way to lock that panel to keep it from going anywhere. Having such a feature would hardly take away from what you can see on the screen -- in fact, it would just ensure that people keep seeing it. Furthermore, and this is important, I did some more digging after writing my initial post, and apparently I'm far from the only one who feels this way:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/panel-hide-lock/td-p/10003698

Report · Jun 13, 2023

Moderators, @Rikk Flohr: Photography, please merge with this existing Idea:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-lightroom-classic-panel-scroll-bar-close-an...

(45 votes, 75 replies)

Report · Jun 13, 2023

Moderators, @Rikk Flohr: Photography, please merge with the existing Idea:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-lightroom-classic-panel-scroll-bar-close-an...

Report · Jun 14, 2023

I appreciate your response, but can't say I agree with it. Everything you say is all well and good, but there's no reason that people can't be able to see lots of information and options on the screen AND there be a way to lock that panel to keep it from going anywhere. Having such a feature would hardly take away from what you can see on the screen -- in fact, it would just ensure that people keep seeing it. Furthermore, and this is important, I did some more digging after writing my initial post, and apparently I'm far from the only one who feels this way…
By @Jordan26437343lemp

I just want to clarify that I didn’t mean to imply that locking the panel was a bad idea. You have every right to want it. I was just sort of explaining why the scroll bars are so narrow. And fortunately, your thread has been merged in with the existing feature request thread so that what you said is now combined with others who feel the same way. I certainly won’t mind if Adobe adds the feature, because it won’t get in my way and will help others.

The trick now is to get Adobe to do it. It isn’t always enough to have some people want the same thing. There are hundreds of requests for features that seem “simple” and they can’t all be done at once, so every software company has to rank which ones should get done first, based on everything from which requests are getting the most votes, to what the competition is doing.

I will help out this effort by clicking the “upvote” button at the top of the page. Good luck!

Report · Jun 14, 2023

Fair enough! And I hope I didn't sound too harsh in my response! I guess I just kind of wanted to convey, especially based on that other thread I came across (which is, I guess, now this thread) that this wasn't some kind of weird quirk in my mind or that I'm obsessing over minutia here. I'll put it this way: if enough users (as in the people who keep Adobe going) think it's a design flaw, it's by definition a design flaw! Unless it's just something completely unreasonable and beyond our current technological capabilities, but I REALLY doubt that's the case here (I mean, Windows itself has "lock" features, right?).

Please also understand that this is kind of "tough love!" If I didn't love Lightroom overall and find it invaluable, I wouldn't care. But it's because I use it so much and plan to use it even more in the future that I think it would be great if this were corrected, just so I'm not taken out of the "zone" while going through my workflow. Hope that makes sense. Thanks again for your attention to this!

Report · Jun 17, 2023

This issue is honestly the most consistently annoying thing in Lightroom.

Report · Jul 12, 2023

This thread started in 2015 & nothing has changed. I find little use for the "hide panels" strip along the edge of the screen. It is too close to the scroll bar which is much more useful. Keyboard shortcuts can be used instead of the long annoying hide panel bar. That side bar should be shrunk to a button, nothing more. Using a pen or a mouse to scroll is rairly accurate enough to avoid the dreaded panel closure strip. It seems like a very simple change to us non-programers. It's been annoying me since the inception of Lightroom.

Report · Jul 12, 2023

I quite simply agree with everything said here!

Report · Jul 12, 2023

If they could finally implement a solution, it would be great...

Report · Sep 19, 2023

This is really annoying! I like to use a wacom tablet and pen to work on LR and it's frustrating to close the panels when trying to scroll through them. I do not want to use the trackpad or a mouse wheel to scroll thru the panels 'cause I am already holding my pen! Adobe... I mean, you guys have implemented and improved tons and tons of features on LR since 2015 when this post started, why can't you add on the existing contextual menu a "Lock panels" option? or "simply" remove the little triangle that closes the panel. Any time I want to open or close those panels I just press TAB and works perfectly. It's like having a really nice sports car with a horrible dent most people see but for some strange reason the owner won't fix. Don't hate me, I love U.

Report · Sep 20, 2023

@ghappys

> I like to use a wacom tablet and pen to work on LR and it's frustrating to close the panels when trying to scroll through them.

While you're waiting for Adobe to implement this feature, which could be a long wait, you can use 'Solo' mode. In 'Solo' mode only one panel can be open at any time. 'Solo' mode can be activated by clicking on any panel header to expose the Context menu. See attached screenshot.

Report · Sep 30, 2023

Move the Arrow beside the Slider Sidebar. Every time I try to move the slider up or down with the bar, the arrow to move the slider sidebar seems to always move the sidebar away when I need it. VERY FRUSTRATING. Please, pretty please, move that arrow either to the top of the bar or the bottom of the bar, not to the side where it is now.

Report · Oct 01, 2023

Unfortunately, people have been complaining about this for many, many years, and Adobe seems uninterested in fixing it.

Report · Oct 01, 2023

Moderators, @Rikk Flohr: Photography, please merge with this existing idea:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-lightroom-classic-panel-scroll-bar-close-an...

Report · Oct 09, 2023

This could be easily fixed by making so that side panels can only be shown/hidden by double clicking on the triangle.

A single click would not do anything so our problem would be solved...no UI re-design needed.

Very basic coding, a JDI.

Report · Oct 09, 2023

One would think!