Custom sidebar

TinyMCE allows developers to create sidebars and add custom UI widgets inside a constrained and easily accessible area of the editor. The sidebar is designed to allow administrators and plugin developers to provide additional tools that can be accessed by TinyMCE users.

This feature is only supported when TinyMCE is run in classic mode. It is not supported in inline mode. For more information on the differences between the editing modes, see Classic editing mode.

Editor sidebar API

The sidebar API allows developers to add sidebars on editor instances in a similar way as adding buttons or menu items. Developers can either add sidebars directly in the tinymce.init using the setup callback or inside your plugin.

This is the syntax for the addSidebar function: editor.ui.registry.addSidebar(name:String, spec:Object)

When a new sidebar is registered, a corresponding toolbar button for toggling the sidebar open and close is also created using the same name. This button can then be included in the toolbar by adding the sidebar name to the toolbar option.

Specification object

Property Type Description

tooltip

String

Specifies a tooltip to be displayed when hovering over the sidebar toggle button.

icon

String

Specifies an icon for the sidebar toggle button. The icon should be the name of an icon provided by the TinyMCE skin or a custom icon.

onSetup

Function

Specifies a function to be called when the panel is first created. It passes in an API object and should return a callback that takes an API. The default is (api) => (api) => {}. This function runs whenever the sidebar is rendered, and the returned callback is executed when the sidebar is destroyed. Therefore, the returned function is essentially an onTeardown handler, and can be used to unbind events and callbacks.

onShow

Function

Specifies a function to be called when the panel is displayed. It passes in an API object.

onHide

Function

Specifies a function to be called when the panel is hidden. It passes in an API object.

API Object

element():HTMLElement

The element():HTMLElement function returns the root element of the sidebar panel.

Options

This feature is only available for TinyMCE 6.1 and later.

This option allows the specified sidebar to be shown on editor initialization.

This feature is only supported when TinyMCE is run in classic mode. It is not supported in inline mode. For more information on the differences between the editing modes, see Classic editing mode.

Type: String

Example: using sidebar_show

tinymce.init({
  selector: 'textarea', // change this value according to your HTML
  sidebar_show: 'mysidebar',
  setup: (editor) => {
    editor.ui.registry.addSidebar('mysidebar', {
      tooltip: 'My sidebar',
      icon: 'comment',
      onShow: (api) => {
        api.element().innerHTML = 'Hello world!';
      },
    });
  }
});

Example inside the tinymce.init

tinymce.init({
  selector: 'textarea', // change this value according to your HTML
  sidebar_show: 'mysidebar',
  toolbar: 'mysidebar',
  setup: (editor) => {
    editor.ui.registry.addSidebar('mysidebar', {
      tooltip: 'My sidebar',
      icon: 'comment',
      onSetup: (api) => {
        console.log('Render panel', api.element());
        return () => {
          console.log('Removing sidebar');
        };
      },
      onShow: (api) => {
        console.log('Show panel', api.element());
        api.element().innerHTML = 'Hello world!';
      },
      onHide: (api) => {
        console.log('Hide panel', api.element());
      }
    });
  }
});

Example inside a TinyMCE plugin

tinymce.PluginManager.add('myplugin', (editor) => {
  editor.ui.registry.addSidebar('mysidebar', {
    tooltip: 'My sidebar',
    icon: 'comment',
    onSetup: (api) => {
      console.log('Render panel', api.element());
      return () => {
        console.log('Removing sidebar');
      };
    },
    onShow: (api) => {
      console.log('Show panel', api.element());
      api.element().innerHTML = 'Hello world!';
    },
    onHide: (api) => {
      console.log('Hide panel', api.element());
    }
  });
});