Microsoft is introducing a SharePoint app bar in SharePoint online that will feature global navigation in your SharePoint modern communication and team sites. The SharePoint app bar brings a consistent navigation experience to every site on your intranet, featuring quick access to important sites across the organization with global navigation, personally relevant sites, news feed and the files.

The SharePoint app bar provides quick access to customizable global navigation as well as other intranet resources. The SharePoint app bar makes important content and resources easily accessible for users on these sites, regardless of where they might be in SharePoint.

The app bar can be accessed on the left-hand side anywhere in SharePoint:

SharePoint app bar experience

Once the SharePoint app bar is enabled on your tenant, it will have 4 tabs at the left hand side of your SharePoint sites:

• Global navigation
• Sites
• News
• Files

Key Highlights

• Personalized content (sites/news/files) in the SharePoint app bar is enabled by Microsoft Graph
• You can only customize the Global navigation tab
• Customizing global navigation requires a home site (must be a communication site).
• When global navigation is disabled or not configured, the home icon links to the SharePoint start page
• Specific SharePoint app bar tabs cannot be disabled
• The SharePoint app bar cannot be disabled on specific sites
• The SharePoint app bar is not available on classic SharePoint sites today, however soon administrators will be able to add it to classic sites manually

Impact of SharePoint app bar on page customizations

The SharePoint app bar may impact current page customizations specifically those that appear on the left side. If you have customized the header and footer placeholders using SPFx extensions, the SharePoint app bar will cover parts of both the header and footer page placeholder:

How to disable the SharePoint app bar?

You cannot disable the SharePoint app bar permanently. However, you can temporarily disable the SharePoint app bar in your tenant using PowerShell until March 31, 2023 (Previously September 30, 2022 and March 31, 2022).

To temporarily disable the SharePoint app bar:

1. Download the latest version of SharePoint Online PowerShell.
2. Then, run the following command with administrator privileges:

Set-SPOTemporarilyDisableAppBar $true

How to enable the SharePoint app bar?

If you have disabled the SharePoint app bar previously and now you are ready to enable the SharePoint app bar in your tenant, run the following command:

Set-SPOTemporarilyDisableAppBar $false

Notes

• To check the current status of app bar, you can use Get-SPOTemporarilyDisableAppBar command.
• It can take up to an hour for the app bar to be removed/show up on a tenant after running the above commands.

Release Timeline

• Targeted Release (organization & user): Completed As of May 4, 2021
• Standard Release: Begins in early May and complete by the end of May.

Microsoft is currently rolling out a SharePoint app bar that features global navigation on all modern SharePoint sites. The SharePoint app bar brings a consistent navigation experience to every site on your intranet, featuring quick access to important sites across the organization with global navigation, personally relevant sites, news feed and the files.

The first tab in app bar is a Global navigation. Global navigation is the only app bar tab that can be customized. When global navigation is disabled or not configured, the default home icon redirects to the SharePoint start page.

Prerequisite for enabling global navigation

• To enable & customize global navigation, you must set up a home site in SharePoint Online
• Site owner (or higher) permissions on the home site

Enable the global navigation in SharePoint

After setting up a home site in your tenant, follow below steps to enable the SharePoint global navigation:

1. Go to your SharePoint home site.

2. Click on Settings icon & then select Global navigation

3. From the global navigation settings, switch the Enable global navigation toggle to On.

Customize the global navigation in SharePoint

From global navigation settings, you can add logo & title for global navigation, select navigation source and edit global navigation links.

Global navigation logo & title

Adding logo for global navigation is optional. If you do not add a logo, the app bar will continue to display the default home icon. If you want to add a logo for global navigation, you should consider below recommended specifications:

• The logo size should be 20×20 pixels
• PNG file type
• Transparent background recommended

Title is required for global navigation which will be displayed at the top of the global navigation pane.

Choose Navigation source

Depending on the home site’s configuration, you can choose the global navigation source using different options.

If your home site is a hub site, you can choose navigation source from below two options:

1. Home site navigation: Select this option to display the home site’s navigation.
2. Hub or global navigation: Select this option to display the home site’s hub navigation.

If your home site is not a hub site, you can still have below two options:

1. Home site navigation: Select this option to display the home site’s navigation.
2. Hub or global navigation: Select this option to create a special navigation for the global navigation panel. You can add global navigation links using Edit global navigation option.

See all the different ways you can set up global navigation, here.

Edit global navigation

You can create the new global navigation menu or make edits to the selected global navigation source if needed by selecting Edit global navigation.

1. Hover over the location in the menu where you want to add a link/label and click +.
2. On the Add a link dialog box, choose one of the following link options:
   • Link to add a link to any site/list/library, page (internal or external to your company).
   • Label to add a label that is not hyperlinked.
3. On the Add a link dialog box, in the Address box, enter the URL for the link you want to add if adding a link.
4. In the Display name box, enter the display text for the link or label. This is the text that will show up on the menu.
5. Click OK

Notes

• Make sure that all users have read (or higher) permissions on the home site to view the global navigation links.
• You can use audience targeting on the menu links in global navigation.
• Implementing global navigation may take up to 24 hours for the changes to take effect for users.

Microsoft is currently rolling out SharePoint app bar and Global navigation to SharePoint online tenants. By default the home icon in app bar is linked to the SharePoint start page. To change this behavior, you need to enable the global navigation. Enabling and customizing global navigation in SharePoint requires a home site.

SharePoint online home site is also required to use Microsoft Viva connections in Microsoft Teams desktop client.

So, if you are planning to customize the global navigation or use Microsoft Viva connections in Microsoft Teams, first you have to set up a home site for your SharePoint online tenant. Home site is a SharePoint site that you create and set as the top landing page for all users in your intranet. You can set only one SharePoint site as a home site which must be a communication site.

Steps to set a site as your home site

1. Create a communication site to set it as the home site or use existing communication site.
2. Customize the communication site by adding navigation, header, footer, site logo, news, events and other web parts as per your requirements and brand.
3. Use PowerShell commands to set a communication site as the home site.

Use PowerShell to set a communication site as the home site

After you create and customize the communication site that you want to use as your home site, you need to run a PowerShell commands to set it as your home site. To run this commands, you must be a global admin or SharePoint admin in your Microsoft 365 tenant.

Using SharePoint Online PowerShell

1. Download the latest version of SharePoint Online Management Shell.

2. Connect to SharePoint admin site as a global admin or SharePoint admin using below command:

Connect-SPOService -Url https://<tenant>-admin.sharepoint.com

3. Run below command to set a communication site as the home site:

Set-SPOHomeSite -HomeSiteUrl https://<tenant>.sharepoint.com/sites/<communicationsite>

Using PnP PowerShell

You can use PnP PowerShell Set-PnPHomeSite command to set the home site for your SharePoint tenant.

Connect-PnPOnline -Url https://<tenant>-admin.sharepoint.com/ -Interactive
Set-PnPHomeSite -HomeSiteUrl "https://<tenant>.sharepoint.com/sites/<communicationsite>"

Using CLI for Microsoft 365

You can use CLI for Microsoft 365 spo homesite set command to set the specified communication site as the Home Site.

m365 login
m365 spo homesite set --siteUrl https://<tenant>.sharepoint.com/sites/<communicationsite>

Points to remember

• Only one communication site can be set as the home site.
• Search scope for the site will be changed to tenant-wide search.
• The site will be automatically set up as an organization news site.
• The first time you set up a home site, it might take up to several minutes for the changes to take effect.
• If you run the above command again to switch your home site to a different site, it might take up to 2 hours.
• Home site can be registered as a hub site, but it can’t be associated with a hub.

Unregister a home site from your tenant

If you have registered a site as a home site in your tenant previously and now you don’t want to have any home site in your tenant, you need to run the following PowerShell command with administrator privileges:

Remove-SPOHomeSite

This removes the current SharePoint Online Home Site setting. Note that you do not need to specify the URL of your home site.

Learn more

• Set up a SharePoint home site from the SharePoint admin center
• Set SharePoint site home page using PnP PowerShell and CLI for Microsoft 365
• Set SharePoint site home page using PnP PowerShell and CLI for Microsoft 365
• SharePoint Online: Empty Recycle Bin using PnP PowerShell
• Change SharePoint Online List URL using PnP PowerShell
• Update SharePoint Page Banner Image using PnP PowerShell
• Add/Update image columns in SharePoint/Microsoft Lists using PnP PowerShell
• SharePoint Online: Apply JSON View formatting using PnP PowerShell
• SharePoint Online: Apply JSON View formatting using CLI for Microsoft 365

Here’s a quick tip to improve your Global Navigation for the new SharePoint App Bar.

From what I’ve seen, most organizations will use the Hub or global navigation for the App Bar’s home link – which is the Global Nav. The root site of the tenant should be a Home Site and also a Hub Site. Then the Hub Site nav makes good sense to show as the Global Nav in the App Bar.

Here’s my demo site’s Home Site navigation, which is the Hub Site navigation. It looks lovely, doesn’t it?

Problem is, the Intranet link doesn’t show up in the App Bar’s Global Nav. It doesn’t matter as long as I’m hanging out in the Hub Site or its associated sites, but if I’m off in a Team Site somewhere, I’ll get lost.

By default, the Hub name is shown in the Hub Site navigation. That makes total sense, at least it did in the slightly older world. But it doesn’t show up in the App Bar’s Global Nav.

The trick is to go into the Hub site settings and not show the Hub name in the navigation.

But wait, now I can’t even navigate back to the Home Site from the Home Site! The trick is to add the Hub Site’s link to the navigation manually.

The result looks exactly the same in the Home Site and its Hub Site navigation. (No, you don’t see a difference, even if you think you do. Maybe a pixel of spacing or something, but really no difference.)

BUT, now that Intranet link is visible in the App Gar’s Global Nav as well. Easy, peasy. All the planning for the App Bar in the world may have missed that!