Bibliofile's window is built from panels you can resize, hide, and switch. This chapter covers the side (detail) panel, the bottom panel, the content each can show — the read-only Details view, the 🤖 Claude assistant, the annotation reader, and the LaTeX preview — how working with a multi-row selection changes both panels, and where to design your own panels.
Resizing, hiding, and switching the side panel#
The left-hand groups sidebar — the one holding your groups, folders, and smart groups — can be resized: drag the divider between it and the publications table. The width is clamped to 150–500 px and is remembered between sessions, like every other panel size on this page.
The right-hand detail pane is fully adjustable:
- Resize — drag the divider between the publications table and the detail pane left or right. The width is clamped to 240–800 px.
- Hide / show — View → Toggle Side Panel (⌥⌘S / Ctrl+Alt+S), or click the × in the pane's header.
- Switch content — the pane's header has a content dropdown (currently offering just Details) plus a dedicated 🤖 Claude toggle button. Click 🤖 Claude to use the assistant right inside the pane; click it again, or the × in the assistant's own title bar, to go back to Details.
Note: The side-pane control is a dropdown + a Claude button, not a pair of tabs. The dropdown lists the available detail content (just Details today, with room to grow), while the assistant — which you flip in and out of frequently — keeps its own one-click button. Because Details is the dropdown's only entry, the dropdown goes on reading "Details" even while the assistant is showing; to get back, use the 🤖 Claude button, the assistant's own ×, or ⌥⌘1. (The two × buttons do different things: the one in the pane header hides the whole side panel, the one in the assistant's title bar just returns the pane to Details.)
All of this is remembered across launches.
The bottom panel#
Open it with View → Toggle Bottom Panel (⇧⌘B / Ctrl+Shift+B). The bottom panel is a wide, selection-driven reader whose content you pick from the content dropdown in its header. It sits under the publications table only — the groups sidebar and the side pane run full height beside it. It offers three views:
- Annotation (the default) — the selected entry's annotation in a wide, comfortable-to-read format (handy for long notes that feel cramped in the narrow side pane). Nothing selected shows a short hint.
- Tabbed — a tabbed reader for the selected entry with Annotation, Abstract, and Attachments tabs (see The Tabbed view below).
- LaTeX Preview — a true BibTeX/
.bsttypesetting of the selected entries' bibliography (see LaTeX preview below).
Drag its top edge to resize (the height is clamped to 80–600 px), and click × to hide.
The Tabbed view#
Switch the bottom panel to Tabbed (from the content dropdown, or View → Bottom Panel → Tabbed, ⌥⌘4) for a compact three-tab reader of the selected entry:
- Annotation — the entry's annotation, rendered from Markdown.
- Abstract — the entry's
Abstractfield, rendered from Markdown. - Attachments — a grid of large thumbnails, one per attached file. PDFs
show their first page; image files (PNG, JPG, GIF, WebP, BMP, SVG, AVIF) show
the picture; other file types show a generic file icon. Double-click a
thumbnail to open the file in the native application for its type, or click
the small × in its corner to remove that attachment from the entry —
the file itself is left on disk. The × only appears on the app's managed
Bdsk-File-Nattachments, not on files the entry merely points at through a local-path field; see Attachments → Removing an attachment.
Click a tab to switch; the view always opens on Annotation. The same tabbed
layout is also available as a starting point for a
custom panel template (the bd-tabs / data-thumb
conventions).
Switching panel content#
There are two ways to choose what each pane shows.
The in-pane dropdowns. Both pane headers carry a small Panel content
dropdown (a <select>): the side pane's lists Details, and the bottom
pane's switches between Annotation, Tabbed, and LaTeX Preview. Use
these when you want to flip content without leaving the mouse. The side pane
additionally has the standalone 🤖 Claude button described above.
The View menu. The same switches live in the menu bar, each with a keyboard shortcut:
| Menu item | Shortcut | Shows |
|---|---|---|
| View → Side Panel → Details | ⌥⌘1 / Ctrl+Alt+1 | The read-only detail view in the side pane |
| View → Side Panel → Claude | ⌥⌘2 / Ctrl+Alt+2 | The 🤖 Claude assistant in the side pane |
| View → Bottom Panel → Annotation | ⌥⌘3 / Ctrl+Alt+3 | The annotation reader in the bottom panel |
| View → Bottom Panel → Tabbed | ⌥⌘4 / Ctrl+Alt+4 | The Annotation · Abstract · Attachments tabs in the bottom panel |
| View → Bottom Panel → LaTeX Preview | ⌥⌘5 / Ctrl+Alt+5 | The LaTeX preview in the bottom panel |
Choosing any of these also reveals the relevant panel if it was hidden, so a single shortcut both shows the panel and selects its content.
Tip: The Claude assistant has a second home: Tools → Claude Assistant… (⌘J / Ctrl+J) opens it in the side pane just like ⌥⌘2.
LaTeX preview#
The bottom panel's LaTeX Preview typesets your library's bibliography
exactly the way LaTeX would — running your local TeX installation over the
selected entries with a real BibTeX .bst style. It is the companion to the
live CSL citation block in the detail pane (see
Preview & Citations): where that block is a
copy-ready CSL rendering, the LaTeX preview is what bibtex itself produces for
the .bst you cite with in your paper.
Show it from the bottom-pane dropdown, from View → Bottom Panel → LaTeX Preview (⌥⌘5 / Ctrl+Alt+5), or from Tools → LaTeX Preview (which opens the bottom panel and switches it to the preview).
What it renders, and how#
- It always typesets the selection. The preview needs at least one selected row: with nothing selected it shows a hint and runs nothing at all. There is no "preview the whole library" mode in the pane.
- A small selection renders as crisp, theme-aware inline SVG. When you have
selected 20 entries or fewer (and the
dvisvgmtool is present in your TeX install), the bibliography is traced to vector SVG that inherits the pane's text colour — so it stays sharp at any zoom and recolours to match light or dark mode. - Larger selections render as a PDF. Select more than 20 entries — or run
a TeX install without
dvisvgm— and the bibliography is compiled to a PDF instead and shown page by page (rendered with PDF.js). One rasterised page scales better than dozens of inline SVGs. - It auto-refreshes from the selection. The preview renders as soon as you open it and then re-renders automatically (debounced, so arrow-keying through rows doesn't spawn a run per row) every time the selection changes. There is no manual refresh button.
Setting the style and finding TeX#
The BibTeX style is a preference: set BibTeX style (.bst) under
Preferences → Citations (for example plain, abbrv, or ieeetr). If your
TeX binaries aren't on the system PATH, set the TeX bin directory there too
(for example /Library/TeX/texbin); leave it empty to search PATH and the
common install locations.
When TeX isn't available, or a compile fails#
The preview needs a working TeX distribution — MacTeX, TeX Live, or MiKTeX. The pane reports its state inline:
- Nothing selected — a hint inviting you to select one or more publications.
- No TeX found — a message explaining that no LaTeX installation was found and pointing you to install one or set the TeX bin directory in Preferences → Citations.
- A compile error — the first few LaTeX error lines, so you can see what went
wrong (a common cause is a
.bststyle name that isn't installed).
Note: The LaTeX preview is not the CSL citation. The CSL block (APA /
Vancouver / Harvard) is independent of LaTeX's .bst system — see
Preview & Citations → Limitations.
Use the LaTeX preview when you want to see exactly what bibtex will make of
your entries in a document.
Working with multiple selected entries#
Selecting two or more rows in the table (Cmd/Ctrl-click to add a row, Shift-click for a range, ⌘A / Ctrl+A for all) switches both the detail pane and the bottom panel into a multi-select view instead of the single-entry view.
Each multi-select view opens with a sticky "Multiple entries selected" header, followed by a count badge showing how many rows are selected, above a scrollable list — one block per entry, headed by its cite key: in the detail pane, each entry's preview; in the bottom panel, each entry's annotation. The list shows up to 50 entries; beyond that a final "+N more not shown" line tells you how many were elided. (The batch tools below still act on the whole selection, not just the 50 that are drawn.)
Two cases opt out of that view: the side pane keeps showing the 🤖 Claude assistant if that is what it was showing, and the bottom panel's LaTeX Preview typesets all the selected entries rather than listing them. The Annotation and Tabbed bottom views both fall back to the same annotation list, so the three tabs disappear while more than one row is selected.
Batch tools (the selection bar)#
Whenever two or more rows are selected, a floating batch-edit bar appears near the bottom of the window — above the bottom panel's top edge when that panel is open, otherwise just above the window's bottom edge. It opens with an "N selected" count, then the tools. Each tool applies one change to the whole selection in a single undo step:
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| Set | Type a field name in Field and a value in value, then Set to write that field on every selected entry. Leave value empty to remove that field from every selected entry |
| Keyword (+) | Type a keyword and press the + Keyword button to add it to every selected entry's Keywords; entries that already have it (ignoring case) are left alone |
| Keyword (−) | The − Keyword button strips that keyword from every selected entry, and drops the Keywords field entirely when nothing is left |
Note: Both keyword buttons are simply labelled Keyword; the + and − icons are what tell them apart. Set stays disabled until you have typed a field name, and the keyword buttons until you have typed a keyword.
Tip: Press Enter in the value box to apply Set, or in the Keyword box to add the keyword, without reaching for the button.
Because each batch operation is a single undoable step, you can apply one and then Edit → Undo (⌘Z / Ctrl+Z) to back it all out at once. The bar disappears as soon as fewer than two rows are selected.
Deleting a selection#
There is no delete button in the multi-select view. To delete the selected entries, either press the Delete or Backspace key with the table focused, or right-click the selection and choose Delete N entries (see below). A deletion is one undo step, so Edit → Undo restores the whole batch; and because nothing is written to disk until you Save, a mistaken deletion before saving is recoverable by reverting (File → Revert to Saved). See Editing Entries.
Tip: A right-click on a row outside the current selection first selects just that row, then acts on it — so you can colour-label or delete a single entry without disturbing a multi-selection elsewhere.
The row context menu#
Right-clicking a row in the publications table opens a compact context menu with:
- Edit Annotation… — opens the standalone annotation editor for the right-clicked entry: a separate window with the entry's preview card above a Markdown editor that auto-saves.
- Find Open-Access PDF… — looks for a freely available PDF for the selection and offers to attach it; see Attachments → Finding open-access PDFs.
- A horizontal row of colour-label dots (plus a ✕ that clears the label) — picking one applies that colour to the selection, mirroring the Publication → Color Label submenu.
- A Delete entry (or Delete N entries, when several are selected) item that removes the selection — the same undoable delete as the Delete / Backspace key.
Press Escape or click anywhere outside to dismiss the menu.
Designing your own panels#
Both the detail pane and the bottom panel are rendered from Handlebars templates, and you can fork and replace either with your own — with custom context fields, helpers, live widgets, and interactive hooks. That is a topic in its own right.
See: Customizing Panels & Outputs — designing your own panel and output templates with Handlebars, including the context fields, helpers, live widgets, interactive hooks, and worked examples.
See also#
- Preview & Citations — the detail pane's preview card and the live CSL citation block that the LaTeX preview complements.
- Customizing Panels & Outputs — Handlebars templates for your own panels and exports.
- Editing Entries — the entry lifecycle, including deleting entries and undo.
- Shortcuts & Reference — the full menu, keyboard, and mouse reference (including the panel shortcuts above).