The toolbar does a lot right now, the right side specifically is a quite intense combination of different interaction types.

• Yellow: status
• Blue: publishing actions
• Red: sidebar / settings
• Green: options

It makes sense to me to explore reducing this. For now, I wanted to start by examining where options could go.

Reducing back to positions, the following graphic shows how they fall right now:

• Top left: block library
• Right: forward-moving actions such as publishing
• Bottom right: a proposed new place for options

The new position I wanted to investigate draws on other apps such as Figma, which uses a drawer for keyboard interactions.

A little note, the work explored here does bring in some elements from #18667 to see what could be. Specifically, the pop-menu uses the style from that Figma file.

This moves options to the bottom and has the same icon. It could be great to explore what icon works here. I think some options could be:

Another option is a smaller strip.

Other panels could be:

I explored a full panel that is open, it could reduce back to a menu and modal that we have, however, I think to grow this and be more useful progressing past the modal could be worth exploring, particularly as this opens to extensibility.

What do people think? This is very early-stage sketching out the idea for now so would welcome some feedback.