The sidebar, on the left, is how you get around Machine Desktop. It lists your bots, group chats, and teams, and holds the tools you'll use most.

From top to bottom

The sidebar: search, pinned bots, group chats, bots, a team, running computers, Tools, and your balance

Top buttons

Switching the sidebar between Comfortable, Compact, and Avatars only

Button	What it does
Collapse to avatars / Expand sidebar	Shrinks the sidebar to just bot pictures, or back.
Sidebar density	Comfortable, Compact, or Avatars only.
Active Threads	What needs you, then every thread that's working. See below.
Refresh threads	Reloads all bots and threads from Machine, for example to show something you just started on the web. It also fetches group chats and teams from your other devices.
+	New Project (a new bot), New group chat, Recipes, and Archived bots (when you have any).

The sidebar collapses to avatars by itself while the bot's computer panel is open, to make room. In avatar mode, hover a bot to see its name, status, and last message. The bottom of the narrow sidebar has a phone button, Mobile App, with links to get the phone app, and a wrench button that opens Tools.

Search

Type in Search to filter the sidebar by bot, thread, folder, or group chat name. Press Esc to clear it.

From two letters on, a Messages list also appears under the bots. It finds thread titles across all your bots, and messages in the conversations the app has loaded (each bot's current thread, and any thread you've opened). Click a result to jump straight to that message.

You can also press Ctrl+K (⌘K) to jump to a bot, group chat, or message. See Command palette.

Busy bots

When any bot is working, a strip of small mascots appears under the search box, one for each busy bot, with how many are working. Click a mascot to open that bot. When nobody is busy, the strip disappears.

Sections

Section	What's in it
Pinned	Bots you've pinned.
Group chats	Your group chats.
Bots	Bots that aren't in a team.
One per team	Bots and group chats in that team.

Click a section's heading to collapse or expand it. A collapsed section still shows small avatars and counts for anything working.
Reorder sections: drag a section by its grip, or click its heading and press Alt+↑ or Alt+↓ (⌥↑ / ⌥↓ on Mac).

Bottom

Tools: hover or click it to open Today, Responsibilities, Automations, Connected apps, Deployments, and Marketplace. A red dot on Automations means a routine's last run failed. Opening the run doesn't clear it: it goes away once that routine runs again without failing, or when you delete the routine. In Simple mode (Settings → General), Deployments and Marketplace are hidden.
N computers running · billing: shows when any bot computers are awake. See Cost and sleep.
Your name and balance: click for Settings, updates, help, and sign out. See The app window.

A bot's row

Each bot shows:

its avatar, with a status dot,
its title above its name,
a pin icon if it's pinned,
an arrow to show its threads.

Status dots

Bots in the sidebar with green, blue, and red status dots

Dot	Meaning
Blue, pulsing	Working.
Gray	Queued: your message is lined up and will go once the bot is free.
Red	Last run failed. Open the thread to see why. It clears when you send another message.
Green	Ready for your next message.

When the sidebar is collapsed to avatars, hover a bot to see the same status in words.

Right-click a bot, or hover it and click ⋯. (Keyboard: select it and press Shift+F10 or the Menu key.)

Item	What it does
New thread	Start a new conversation with this bot.
New folder	Create a folder for its threads.
Show activity	Opens a small floating window with a live log of what the bot is doing: each command, file, and word, as it happens. Drag it anywhere.
Kick	Unsticks a bot that seems frozen. See The bot's computer.
Pin / Unpin	Keep the bot at the top under Pinned.
Move to team	Put it in a team. See Teams.
Edit Profile	Open its settings.
Duplicate	Make a new bot based on this one.
Copy conversation ID	Copy the current thread's ID. Support may ask for it.
Archive	Hide it from the sidebar, on all your devices.
Remove from Machine	Delete it permanently, everywhere.

Archive and Remove are very different. See Archive or remove a bot.

Quick rename: double-click a bot's name in the sidebar.

Needs you and Active Threads

Click Active Threads (the pulse icon) at the top of the sidebar. The list that opens has two parts.

The Active Threads list, with the Needs you inbox at the top

Needs you

At the top, Needs you collects what's waiting on you across your bots:

Group	What's in it	What you can do
Approvals	Actions a bot is asking permission for, in the thread you currently have open with that bot.	Click the check mark (Allow once) or the crossed circle (Deny) to answer right there. Click the row to open the thread instead.
Routines that didn't run	Routines whose last run Failed.	Click one to open its run logs in Automations.

An approval in one of a bot's other threads isn't listed: it waits in that thread, so open the thread to answer it. An approval older than a day drops off the list. A failed routine stays until that routine runs again without failing, or for up to a week. Opening the run doesn't clear it.

When there's nothing to do, it says "Nothing needs you. Your bots are on it."

Active Threads

Below that is every thread, across all your bots, that's working right now.

Click a thread to go straight to it. Click Pin to keep this list open under the search box, so you always see what's going on. Click Unpin to put it back.

The badge

The badge on the button shows a count. When something needs you, the badge turns orange and counts those items. Otherwise it's your accent color and counts the active threads.

Teams

A team is a section in the sidebar that groups bots and group chats, like Marketing, Personal, or Client A. Teams are only for organizing: they don't change what bots can do. Your teams follow you to Machine Desktop on your other computers and to the Machine phone app.

Create a team and add bots

Right-click a bot and choose Move to team.
Type a name under New team… and click Add.

To add more bots, right-click each and choose Move to team, then pick the team. You can also type a team name when you create a group chat.

To take a bot out of a team, choose Move to team → Move to General.

Change a team

Right-click a team's heading, or click its ⋯:

Item	What it does
Rename	Change the team's name.
Share as a recipe	Saves the team as a recipe file someone else can add. See Share your own team.
Delete section	Removes the team section. Its bots and chats move back to the main list.
Archive team…	Archives every bot in the team and deletes its group chats. Bots can be restored from Archived bots.

Share as a recipe and Archive team… only appear when the team has bots or group chats in it. A team with nothing in it shows Add bots: click it to choose bots to move in.

Keep the sidebar tidy

Pin the bots you use most.
Group the rest into teams.
Collapse sections you don't need right now.
Archive bots you've finished with. See Archive or remove.
Switch density to Compact to fit more.
Hide thread lists in Settings → Appearance → Threads for a simple, one-conversation-per-bot view.

The sidebar