The floating Explorer panel is the compact side panel you meet inside the editor and the new-document flow. Where the full-page Explorer is the complete library, the panel is built for one job: finding a document fast while you are mid-task, without leaving the canvas you are on.
What the panel shows
Under a Current Document card, the panel shows the same three groups as the Explorer page's sidebar, Overview, Spaces and More, trimmed to the panel's width.
- Rows with documents open in place. Shared with me, My documents (your folders, then the documents at its root), each team and This browser open to show their documents right there. Pick a document and it opens; the one you are in stays put behind it, and its row is highlighted.
- Home, Activity, the Library pages and Trash open their page in the full Explorer.
- The panel opens compact, everything closed, and remembers what you opened while the editor is open.
- Drag one of your documents onto a folder to file it, or onto My documents to put it back at the root.
It is the same data as the full page, just a quicker door into it: folders, ownership, and sharing all behave identically. Each document has the same menu as on the full page, from its ⋯ button, a right-click, or Shift+F10, so Hide from Recent works here as well. A document saved only in this browser carries the Local only pill (Offline Mode).
The keyboard works as in the sidebar: one stop when you press Tab, then the arrow keys to move, Right and Left to open and close, and Enter to open a row. Answering team invites and creating a team happen in the full Explorer.
The ⋯ button in the panel's header, beside the help button, opens a menu with New Document and Open Explorer (the full-page library), then Share and Export for the document you are in, then Search, GitHub (the open-source code) and Settings.
When you will see it
- In the editor, to jump to another document without going back to the library.
- In the new-document flow, to pick an existing document instead of starting blank.
Like everywhere else in the Explorer, the panel works whether or not you are signed in, showing the documents your browser or account owns.
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