VSCode suddenly opening panel at the bottom of the screen (ignoring settings)

Question

I don't understand the change of the panel not being where it's supposed to be.

Suddenly, pressing command+J opens the panel at the bottom of the screen, instead of to the right. I have not changed anything in my settings, although this error message seems to have turned up in my settings since the last update;

Workbench › Panel: Default Location

With the introduction of the side panel, the panel position is no 
longer able to be moved in favor of moving view containers between 
the panels.

Googling this does not give me any results. What does it mean?! What side panel, if not THE side panel (which is now a bottom panel) are they talking about?

Answer 1

See https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/141349#issuecomment-1033046397 for an update on the changes made in v1.64 on this issue and inclusion in the recovery build soon.

The recovery build is out:

In v1.64.2 which hasbeen released. Put the Side Bar on the right and use the command View: Move Panel Right (or Left or Bottom). In one workspace with the setting Workbench > Panel: Default Location : right it put the Panel to the right of the Side Bar (so far right) but triggering the command fixed that. Editor | Terminal (Panel) | Side Bar. And working if put on the left too.

---

With the Recovey Build mentioned above, the following answer is largely "deprecated". I'll leave it for historical purposes.

This behaviour, of moving the Panel to the bottom despite your panelLocation setting is the result of the new Side Panel coming to Stable v1.64. The olde workbench.panel.defaultLocation setting has been deprecated and the Panel will remain at the bottom despite the defaultLocation setting. [Apparently, "deprecated" in this case means ignored.]

But, now you can have the traditional Side Bar on one side, the new Side Panel on the opposite side and the Panel on the bottom. Or turn off any of those.

Replacing Panel Location

As mentioned above, the new Side Panel provides similar functionality as moving the Panel to the left or right, yet improves on this by not forcing the move of the original panel. Along with view drag and drop between panels, the new Side Panel is replacing the option to move the bottom Panel.

In light of that, we have deprecated the workbench.panel.defaultLocation setting as well as the Move Panel... commands in favor of similar commands Move Views From Panel To Side Panel (workbench.action.movePanelToSidePanel) and Move Views From Side Panel To Panel (workbench.action.moveSidePanelToPanel). The old commands will remap to the appropriate new command providing the similiar behavior. Though, we recommend updating your keybindings to the new commands.

See more here: Release Notes: New Side Panel