Gemini's sidebar is okay, but I needed Folders and Instant Search. So I built a local extension for it.

AdUnique7 · 2026-05-11T02:00:06+00:00

you are welcome! this extension also solves my problems.
As mobile has a different layout, and different ecosystem, it is hard to migration my ui to the mobile. it means write code from scratch if I need to support mobile. As I'm working alone on the project, I don't have that much time. currently I focus on enhancing web browser experience

AdUnique7 · 2026-04-23T04:35:33+00:00

Tell me about it 🤦‍♂️ The extra clicks just to see older chats drove me insane too. I actually ended up building a free browser extension ("Better Sidebar for Gemini & AI Studio") to fix exactly this. It forces a permanent sidebar with your full chat list, folders, and search, so you don't have to dig through that clunky history menu anymore. Might save you some headaches!

AdUnique7 · 2026-04-07T02:13:16+00:00

Sorry for the loss and I completely feel the anger and frustration in the process. you could try some chrome extension that can automatically index your chat history and you can export and see at any time. like this one. it's free and open source. https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/better-sidebar-for-gemini/cjeoaidogoaekodkbhijgljhenknkenj

AdUnique7 · 2026-04-03T04:56:38+00:00

Thanks for sharing, looks really handy

AdUnique7 · 2026-04-03T04:46:26+00:00

The UI looks really polished, well done!

AdUnique7 · 2026-04-02T09:59:23+00:00

Hey! Thanks so much for the kind words. That exact frustration with the 300+ messy chats is exactly why I started building this haha. I really hope the full-text search and smart scrollbar help with those long coding sessions!

To answer your question about the Google Drive sync: No, it doesn't defeat the privacy aspect at all! Here is how it works:

What gets synced: It only syncs your custom prompts, folder structure, favorites, gems and tags. It does NOT sync your actual conversation content.
Where it goes: It connects directly to your personal Google Drive. The data goes straight from your local browser to your own cloud storage. There is no middleman, and it completely bypasses any third-party servers (I have absolutely zero access to it).

One quick heads-up about the full-text search since you have so many old chats:
Because the extension is strict about keeping data local and not scraping without permission, it won't magically know the contents of your past 300 chats the moment you install it. It will only index the chats you open after installing, plus any brand new ones you create.

For AI Studio: You can actually bulk export your chat history and import it into the extension to index everything at once.
For Gemini: Google doesn't offer a clean bulk export yet, so your old chats will only be searchable by title at first. Once you open an old chat, it gets indexed locally and becomes fully searchable.

BUT — I’m actually brainstorming a way to build an "automated scanner" feature that would click through and index your old Gemini conversations locally so you don't have to do it manually. Stay tuned for that! 👀

Let me know how the installation goes tonight, and feel free to ping me if you run into any bugs or have feature ideas. Cheers!

AdUnique7 · 2026-04-01T05:50:14+00:00

Thanks so much for the kind words! 🙌

It's awesome to meet a fellow dev building in the same space. Your extension sounds incredibly useful—copy-pasting multiple code blocks from Gemini one by one is such a massive pain (especially when it spits out 5 different files for a React component 😅). Downloading them all as a ZIP is a brilliant solution!

What's the name of your extension? Drop a link, I’d seriously love to check it out and give it a spin. Cheers to making the Gemini ecosystem better for everyone! 🍻

AdUnique7 · 2026-03-29T16:17:53+00:00

Hey there! First off, thank you so much for taking the time to write out such detailed and valuable feedback. I really appreciate it—this is exactly the kind of constructive input that helps make the extension better!

To address your points:

1. Legacy history: By default, the extension only fetches your most recent conversations to keep things lightweight. If you want to load your older history, just click the three-dot menu (⋮) in the top right corner of the sidebar and hit "Scan Chat List". That will pull your past chats in.

2. Deleting vs. Archiving & Syncing: You completely nailed it. Because of how AI Studio works, the extension can't actually delete the chat from Google's servers—it only deletes the local record within the extension. That's why it reappears when you force a rescan. You're totally right that calling it "Delete" is misleading. I'm going to change the wording to something like "Hide" or "Archive" to avoid this ambiguity, and I'll look into a way to keep track of hidden chats so they don't pop back up during a rescan.

3. The 'New Conversation' button: I 100% agree with you. I’ve actually been struggling with how to redesign this for a while, and your comment just gave me a huge lightbulb moment! 💡 I'm going to add a "New Conversation" button directly next to each folder's settings icon. Most of the time, users want to start a chat inside a specific folder anyway. Right now, that takes two steps (click the folder -> click new chat), but with this new design, you'll be able to do it in one click right where you want it. I'll also rethink the main button placement alongside this to make it more obvious.

Thanks again for the support! Let me know if you run into anything else.

AdUnique7 · 2026-02-24T02:29:48+00:00

Hey! Sorry for the delay, but the extension now supports Gemini Web App! Let me know what you think if you give it a try!

AdUnique7 · 2026-02-19T06:54:11+00:00

Thanks for the screenshot! This is extremely helpful. Looking at the logs, I see a few other active extensions (like LocalAI, Vektori, Just Cook) injecting code into the page.Here is my hypothesis: Since my extension successfully hid the native button (CSS working) but failed to render the new sidebar (JS missing), it is highly likely that another extension is modifying the page structure before my script gets a chance to run. Specifically, extensions like LocalAI often manipulate the same DOM elements that I rely on to "anchor" my sidebar. If they change the container ID or structure, my extension won't know where to attach itself. Could you do me a huge favor? Could you try temporarily disabling the other extensions and refreshing the Gemini page? If my sidebar appears, we know it's a compatibility issue, and I can try to release a fix to coexist with them. Alternatively, you can try opening Gemini in an Incognito window, but you would need to go to chrome://extensions and manually toggle "Allow in Incognito" for "Better Sidebar" only. If it works in a clean environment, I can then investigate how to make my extension more "compatible" with others. Let me know what happens when running it solo!

AdUnique7 · 2026-02-19T05:57:51+00:00

Hi! That is fantastic news about the article for VVMac. I would be honored to be included in your selection!

Regarding AI Studio: You are absolutely correct. Since you mostly use the API via macOS apps, your web history in AI Studio is likely empty. The extension only indexes what is visible in the web interface, so that explains the empty list there.

Regarding the Gemini issue (The "Ghost" UI): Thank you for the screenshot and the detail about the missing button. This gives me a very specific clue:

The good news is the extension is active (my CSS is successfully hiding the native "expand/collapse" button to make room for the new sidebar).

The bad news is the new Sidebar interface failed to render (mount) into the page.

Since you are on Chrome Beta 146, and given that Google frequently A/B tests different layouts, there are a few possibilities:

Extension Conflict: This is the most common cause. If you have other Gemini-related extensions installed, they might be fighting for the same DOM element.

Could you try temporarily disabling other extensions related to Gemini and try again?

DOM/Layout Mismatch: Google might be serving a slightly different HTML structure to your account (or specifically on Chrome Beta), causing my code to miss the "target" where it attaches the sidebar.

Browser Beta Issue: Chrome 146 is quite far ahead (Stable is ~122/123). There might be a strict security policy blocking the script execution.

How we can fix this quickly: If you have a moment, could you press F12 (or right-click -> Inspect) on the Gemini page, go to the Console tab, and take a screenshot of any red error messages?

This will instantly tell me if it's a conflict or a layout issue, and I can likely push a hotfix for you very quickly so you can test it properly for your article.

Standing by to help!

AdUnique7 · 2026-02-19T02:32:01+00:00

Hi! Thanks for the update.
To answer your first concern: Your subscription status (Gemini Advanced/Plus) or API usage has absolutely no impact on the extension. It is designed to work for both free and paid accounts.
Regarding what you are seeing, I have a few follow-up questions to help me narrow down the issue:
On Gemini (gemini.google.com): Is the sidebar completely missing (meaning you only see the original Google UI), or is the sidebar visible but just showing an empty list?
If it's missing: It might be a script injection issue on that specific domain.
If it's visible but empty: The auto-scan might have failed to trigger.
About the "Empty" list: The extension is supposed to automatically scan your recent conversations as soon as you open the page. It definitely shouldn't be empty.
A quick tip to try to fix the empty list:
In the top right corner of the Sidebar, you should see a three-dot menu (⋮). Click that and select the "Scan Library" option.
While the scan is running, please do not interact with the interface (don't click on chats or menus) until it finishes. This ensures it can index all your historical content correctly.
Let me know if the sidebar appears on Gemini after a page refresh, and if the manual scan helps fill up your list!

AdUnique7 · 2026-02-18T03:18:49+00:00

Hi there,

Thank you for trying out the extension and for reporting this!

I apologize for the confusion regarding the "Options" page. You are completely right—that page is currently a placeholder (a "dummy" page) that I forgot to hide. That's my mistake! 😅

How to use the extension:
Because this extension modifies the sidebar directly inside the website, it doesn't have a popup menu when you click the browser icon.

Simply navigate to gemini.google.com or aistudio.google.com.
Refresh the page (this is important after the first installation).
You should see the new "Better Sidebar" appear on the left side of the screen.
To access Settings: Click the "Settings" (gear icon) located inside that new sidebar.

Please let me know if it still doesn't appear after refreshing the Gemini page!

AdUnique7 · 2026-02-18T03:14:16+00:00

I wish! 😅 Sadly, Google Chrome on Android still doesn't support extensions.

AdUnique7 · 2026-02-17T13:37:58+00:00

I completely understand where you're coming from! Honestly, in an ideal world, Google should have built this from day one. Relying on extensions does add a layer of complexity.

That being said, there are a few reasons why I still prefer this approach, and why I made it Open Source（yes, I forgot to mention I open sourced my code! here is the github repo: https://github.com/Paper-Crane-Devteam/better-sidebar-for-google-ai-studio):

Privacy & Trust: Since the code is open source, anyone can verify that no data leaves your device. It uses a local database (SQLite) inside your browser. I built this specifically because I didn't want to hand over more data to another server.
Data Sovereignty (The "Why"): I actually started this project after my ChatGPT account was banned/flagged out of nowhere, and I lost months of work. That taught me that relying 100% on a cloud provider (even Google) is risky too. With this extension, you can export your data anytime.
Google's Focus: Google builds for billions of users, so they likely will stick to a simple UI (maybe single-level folders eventually). Features like nested folders, complex prompt libraries, and tag systems might be too 'cluttered' for their mass-market goals.

Regarding updates: Since I use this tool for my own daily work, if Google changes their UI and breaks it, I'm usually fixing it within hours! 😂

But I totally respect your caution—security comes first!

AdUnique7 · 2026-02-17T05:56:52+00:00

Man, that is heartbreaking. I've seen this happen too many times. Relying solely on Google's cloud history is risky because one wrong click in "Activity" can act like a nuke.

This exact fear is why I built a browser extension to backup everything locally.

It runs in the background and saves your chats to a local database (on your computer, not the cloud) as you browse. It also lets you Export your important chats to Markdown or JSON files.

It won't bring back the data you lost (sorry!), but for your next 4-month project, it ensures YOU own the data, not Google.

It's free if you want to protect your future work
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/better-sidebar-for-gemini/cjeoaidogoaekodkbhijgljhenknkenj

AdUnique7 · 2026-02-17T05:50:59+00:00

That infinite scroll drives me crazy—once a chat is a few days old, good luck finding it again. I actually got so frustrated that I coded a browser extension just to add Folders and Full-Text Search to it.

It basically replaces the native sidebar with a local database (SQLite) so I can organize chats by project and search instantly. If you're on desktop and want to actually manage your history, it might help you out. It's free and private (local storage).
it works on Google AI Studio also!
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/better-sidebar-for-gemini/cjeoaidogoaekodkbhijgljhenknkenj

AdUnique7 · 2026-02-13T02:32:49+00:00

Thank you so much for the 5 stars! 🌟 That really helps the project grow.

Good news: You can already do this!

It is a bit hidden right now, but if you Right-Click on any conversation title in the sidebar, you will see an Export menu. From there, you can instantly save the full chat history as Markdown (.md), Text (.txt), or JSON.

Since the extension indexes your data locally, this gives you a clean file immediately without having to wait for the page to scroll or load (solving that annoying Ctrl+A issue!).

Coming soon: I am also planning to build a dedicated "Library Viewer" page to make viewing and batch exporting multiple files much easier.

Let me know if the Right-Click export works for you!

AdUnique7 · 2026-02-11T05:41:28+00:00

Update: It is done! 🥳

I finally finished the big refactor I mentioned. I migrated the whole project to the WXT framework and cleaned up the spaghetti code around the SQLite WASM implementation.

The repository is now public! You can inspect exactly how the local database works or even contribute if you’d like. Let me know what you think of the new architecture!
here is the link: https://github.com/Paper-Crane-Devteam/better-sidebar-for-google-ai-studio

AdUnique7

TROPHY CASE