As for now, we can focus sidebar with ctrl-0 and navigate the tree with arrow keys or hjkl if in vintage mode. But it would be really helpful if we can search and locate, or search to filter when inside sidebar. The main goal here is to avoid mouse clicks/scrolls and eye fixing manually into the tree to find out the target folder or file.
A simpler version of this feature could works like many file browsers like nautilus or Mac’s Finder, they typically allow us to “just start typing to filter” then will auto focus on the first entry that matched the types (like nautilus). Even this simpler version can avoid many many mouse click/scroll/eye strains.
Of course the “typing to filter” will conflict vintage hjkl usage, but I think if in vintage mode, the filter can be triggered with ctrl-F or / or anything not hjkl.
A richer version of this would be like, show a small input box at the sidebar buffer’s bottom when we pressed ctrl-F or /, and do a fuzzy search to filter out entries, then we can use arrow keys or hjkl to select the entry (just like ctrl-p but for sidebar tree). I’d imagine this cannot be done easily, or somehow conflict the design of sublime text? If so, please consider the simpler version.
I know there are plugins exactly for this purpose, and I tried many of them like Dired or FileBrowser, they are very feature rich of course, but somehow I find it hard to seamless integrate into my daily workflow.
One can also argue that Ctrl-p might be enough, but ctrl-p works best if we know the file structure very well, sometime we just need some visual aid when navigating the file tree.
Thanks!