The Frustrating Collapse
Google Docs utilizes sidebars to house its most powerful features, such as the Document Outline, the Dictionary, the Translate tool, or various third-party Add-ons (like bibliography managers). When you open one of these sidebars, it occupies the right or left edge of your screen. However, depending on your browser window size and zoom level, Google Docs will sometimes automatically close or collapse the active sidebar the moment you click back into the main document body to start typing. This forces you to navigate back through the top menus to constantly reopen the tool you were just using.
Keeping the Tools Visible
To maintain a productive workspace and stop Google Docs from automatically closing your active sidebars when you interact with the main document, you must manage your screen real estate.
Google Docs automatically collapses sidebars as a responsive design feature; if it calculates that keeping the sidebar open would shrink the main document text below a readable threshold, it auto-closes the sidebar to “protect” the text. There is no off-switch for this behavior. To prevent it, you must give Docs more space. First, try reducing the zoom level of the document itself (click the “100%” dropdown in the toolbar and change it to “75%”). If that fails, reduce the zoom level of the entire Chrome browser by pressing Ctrl + Minus (-) (or Command + Minus on Mac). Once the browser window perceives it has enough horizontal pixels, the sidebar will permanently anchor and stop auto-closing.