File Status only showing diff
Asked by Jamie Morton:

My File Status window is only showing a Diff for one file and won't show me the file lists of staged or unstaged files which have been there for years. How do I get the default File Status screen layout back?


Answers:
author: MarqueIV
body: Just did an update and this happened to me too. Soooo frustrating! I think it's a bug.  

Update: I posted a fix below.


author: MarqueIV
body: Ok... figured it out. It's a glitch in the UI where the file list (the left side of the client area, diff view is on the right) gets collapsed down to zero-width, which shouldn't be possible, hence this being a glitch/bug, and there's no way to resize it back out again. At least not directly.

Normally to resize the width of a collapsed column, you'd move the cursor to the side of the pane where it's collapsed, then you simply drag the splitter back out, revealing that column. BUT... since SourceTree also has a sidebar that itself has a splitter between it and the main content (which again has its own splitter between the file list and the diff view), it essentially means there are \*two\* splitters between the sidebar and the content now, stacked on top of each other, and the outermost one with the sidebar takes precedence, thus it is impossible to resize the file list back out again. Try as you may, all you'll do is resize the side bar relative to the main content.

But... we can address that with a UI hack. Just hide the sidebar, thus hiding/removing the dominant splitter that's getting in your way!

To fix...

1. Go to the \`View\` menu and select \`Hide Side Bar\`
2. Move your cursor to the leftmost edge of the window. It will change to an arrow with a line indicating you are dragging a splitter and not resizing the window. (This is the splitter between the file list and the diff view.)
3. Drag this splitter to the right. You will now again see the file list on the left (and ironically you should not be able to collapse it back down to zero, which is how it's supposed to work.)
4. Finally, go back to the \`View\` menu and select \`Show Side Bar\` to get things back to normal.

Now, I only knew to try this because I'm a macOS developer who has dealt with multi-split-panes with collapsed panels before. This is not something the average user would be able to figure out intuitively. Atlassian, you really need to fix/address this. At a minimum, include a 'reset UI' button in the settings. It may be rare, but you almost lost me as a client because I couldn't see my file changes. A simple button would have mitigated this mess. Better yet, figure out how the UI could even get into this state in the first place.

comments: author: jhabbott
body: I just had the same issue but the diff view had vanished (only for uncommitted changes, it was still there for commit history), and it's really hard to grab the divider on the right because you get the window border instead. I did manage though... I think it happens when SourceTree opens on a more narrow monitor, caused by macOS having this ridiculous notion of a focused/active display, where if you use CMD+space to open spotlight and launch programs, then it uses the active display instead of your main one... programs do try to remember which display they opened on, but I guess it sometimes gets forgotten and when SourceTree opens on my vertical screen, yeah, it goes more narrow and the pane gets squished to zero on one edge.


author: Jeff Davis
body: When I follow these steps, it will only re-open the sidebar. I can't get the file list back. I am going to uninstall SourceTree and reinstall it. This is very frustrating. You would think there would be an item under the View menu to toggle it back on.


author: adeynack
body: Re-installing did not change anything for me. I even deleted \`\~/Library/Application Support/SourceTree\` and it was still restoring the same window / panel positions with the missing file list panel.


author: daeh
body: FYI I opened a bug report for this, which you can add votes to <https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/SRCTREE-8146>


author: semeonperadze
body: Expading it back with the mouse did not work for me but I did it with the touchpad eventually and two fingers. Nothing else worked.

* hover on the separator line until the cursor changes
* press and hold with one finger
* drag with another

I did not need to hide the left panel.


author: al
body: Managed to fix it see thread here:  
<https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Sourcetree-questions/File-status-menu-doesn-t-show-up-list-of-files/qaq-p/2711411#U2786272>  

Basically have to grab the pane right under "All files, sorted....."

![Screen Shot 2024-08-16 at 1.32.18 AM.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/342080i26C34D89E06C416C/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "Screen Shot 2024-08-16 at 1.32.18 AM.png")


author: brettrudd
body: downgrading to 4.2.7 worked: <https://www.sourcetreeapp.com/download-archives>


author: brettrudd
body: this renders the app useless.


author: daeh
body: This is a brutal bug. Like [@Jeff Davis](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/5517406) , when I hide the sidebar and try to drag the file list back out, it just re-reposes the sidebar. Has anyone raised this as a major bug with the devs? It has rendered the application unusable for me.