Closing And Opening View Panels In Blender

Hiding Panels to Save Screen Space

Blender’s interface is highly customizable, with multiple reorderable panels available for modifying objects, sculptures, materials, textures and more. However, having all panels open at once can limit the 3D Viewport space. Luckily, Blender allows users to easily hide specific panels in order to maximize the 3D Viewport area.

There are a few methods for hiding panels in Blender:

• Clicking the triangle icon in the upper right corner of a panel hides just that panel
• Using the Editor Type menu in a panel’s header hides all panels of that editor type
• Pressing the spacebar hides all panels, leaving only the 3D Viewport visible

Hiding individual panels by clicking their triangle icon allows precision control over which parts of the interface are visible. For example, while modeling an object, you may want to hide the Materials, Textures and Physics panels to make more room for working in the 3D Viewport.

The Editor Type menu operates at a broader level, letting you show or hide all panels for a specific editor in one click. If you are finished adjusting materials and textures and want to focus just on modeling, choosing “Hide Material Editors” from this menu is an easy way to clean up the interface.

For the most barebones view, pressing the spacebar hides every panel, filling the entire Blender window with the 3D Viewport. This maximizes the area available for working on the actual 3D scene. When in this full-screen view, pressing spacebar again restores the previous panel configuration.

Experiment with these approaches to hiding panels in order to find interface set ups that work for your modeling workflow. Just be sure to save custom configurations as described later in this article before closing Blender.

Keyboard shortcuts for managing viewport panels

In addition to the methods above, Blender offers handy keyboard shortcuts for hiding, unhiding and toggling the visibility of panels in the 3D Viewport:

• H – Hide active panel
• Shift-H – Unhide all panels
• T – Toggle active panel’s visibility

Where “active panel” refers to the last panel your mouse cursor was hovering over. For power users, these hotkeys make it easy to show and hide panels without ever needing to use the mouse.

The View Menu for Managing Panels

While individual panels and editor types have their own show/hide controls, the View menu contains options that globally manage panels within the current workspace. These include:

• “Area” options for splitting the window or swapping 3D Viewport and panel positions
• “Toggle System Console” for showing error and logging messages
• Options like “Toggle Toolbar”, “Toggle Sidebar” for the tools/properties regions

The Area menu contains several options for customizing how the Blender UI space is divided:

• “Horizontal Split” adds a splice across the 3D Viewport, giving upper and lower sub-areas
• “Vertical Split” bisects the window left and right
• “Swap Areas” swaps the 3D Viewport and toolbar/properties regions

Using these options, you can create complex multimonitor-style setups within Blender’s window. For example, the 3D Viewport could take up the left half of the screen, with the shader node editor and timeline on the right. Or an entire separate area just for working with modifiers without having to toggle between edit and object mode.

The Show/Hide options are useful for minimalist workflows. Hiding menus and toolbars removes interface chrome, letting you focus solely on modeling while still accessing other panels like modifiers as needed.

So for full control over Blender’s panel real estate, look to the View menu alongside individual panel show/hide buttons.

Keyboard Shortcuts for Hiding and Showing Panels

Blender offers dozens of keyboard shortcuts for interacting with the interface. Several of these hotkeys can be used for quickly hiding and unhiding panels in the viewport:

• Spacebar – Toggle all panels visibility
• Ctrl + Up Arrow – Display next panel region
• Ctrl + Down Arrow – Display previous panel region
• Shift + Spacebar – Toggle fullscreen area
• Ctrl + \ – Collapse or expand current panel

Tapping the Spacebar hides or shows all UI panels, giving instant access to a full 3D Viewport. This key works as a toggle, letting you instantly get back the previous panel setup.

Ctrl + Up/Down cycles through just the panel regions themselves – for example, switching from the Properties Shelf to the Tool Shelf panel. Useful for accessing different panels quickly.

Shift + Spacebar hides all panels and toolbars, filling the entire interface with the 3D Viewport for distraction-free modeling.

Ctrl + \ collapses or expands the active panel itself. Great for minimizing panels like Modifiers or Materials to just their headers while you work.

Practice these hotkeys until they become muscle memory. They will speed up your workflow significantly by putting viewport control at your fingertips.

Saving Custom Panel Layouts

While toggling panels manually serves most use cases, for complex custom UI set ups Blender allows you to save panel layouts for later reuse. This ensures you can always get back to an optimal screen configuration.

The Screen Layout Menu

In any empty spot in the toolbar, Right Click and choose Add Screen Layout. This saves the current panel configuration with a name of your choosing. To reapply this layout, select it from the Screen Layout menu.

Some examples of useful saved layouts might include:

• “Modeling” – Just 3D Viewport plus Modeling/Shading/Modifiers panels
• “UV Mapping” – 3D View/Properties view with UV Editor open
• “Animation” – Animators workspace, Dope Sheet, Graph Editor etc

Note that Screen Layouts are per Workspace – they need to be configured separately for Modeling, Texture Paint, Compositing etc. Screen Layouts are a quick way to prepare custom interfaces for specialized tasks.

Hotkey for Saving Layouts

For even faster saving, with NumPad 0-4 enable the Screen Layout Hotkeys add-on. This maps saving up to 5 custom Layouts to Ctrl + Numpad keys. Tap to instantly snapshot a panel configuration – no need to ever open menus.

This keeps the creative flow going compared to interrupting workflow to handle interface overhead. Use liberally and bind layouts to letter keys for convenience.

Resetting to Factory Settings

No matter how much you customize Blender’s interface, you can always get back to the original defaults using Factory Reset. This clears any customizations and restores the out-of-box settings.

Reset to Factory via File Menu

Inside the Info Editor window, use File -> Load Factory Settings. A dialog will confirm resetting all settings including Workspaces, Keymaps and Add-ons back to factory condition.

This global reset affects the whole Blender application. It wipes any UI tweaks or settings changes anywhere in Blender.

Resetting Individual Workspaces

To reset just one workspace like Modeling or UV Editing, switch to that Workspace. Then use the Workspace Menu -> Reset to Factory Settings option.

This restores just that workspace’s panel layouts, keeping all others intact. Handy for cleaning up a single troublesome workspace without losing global config.

Panel Management Add-ons

Blender’s built-in functionality covers most panel management needs. But for advanced control, developer add-ons can customize Blender’s interface even further:

Display Tools Add-on

Display Tools lets you define multiple custom window setups within the same Blender instance. Configurations can be mapped to hotkeys for fast swapping while modeling.

Use cases might include optimizing Blender’s UI separately for reference board inspiration, low-distraction modeling, UI/UX design, or video editing. Switch between interfaces tuned for specific tasks in seconds.

CONFIG Box Add-on

Where Display Tools focuses on window manager configurations, CONFIG Box handles customizing the 3D Viewport itself.

It lets you set up multiple preconfigured Viewport layouts, snapping between editorial, animation, shading, rigging and other modes.

CONFIG Box also offers advanced panel management. Collapse, Snap and Nest allow customizing regions like the Tool Shelf.

Combined, these two add-ons let you customize Blender’s entire UI down the individual panel level. With enough tweaking, you can optimize workflows for specialty use cases.