I've not used Sublime Text, but I think treemacs fits what you are looking for

https://github.com/Alexander-Miller/treemacs

I think that the look and feel is what I like more about Emacs. Having such a complete environment full screen without much space waster makes me much more focused

Do you mean like `M-x speedbar'? Lots of third-party customizations for it, too.

to add to this, if there are things the speed bar doesn't do that you wish it did, the chance that there's no package for {specific thing you want} is vanishingly small.

The primary difficulty is in being able to find exactly what you're looking for. Precise terminology and specific terms of art (i.e. linting, directory traversal, syntax hiliting) will help here.

For me, speedbar is a no-go, since it opens in a new frame. If I switch to browser, and then back to Emacs buffer, it is still hidden behind a browser windows.

From sidebar, what I look is an exact equivalent of Sublime Text's sidebar.

- It opens in the same frame - I can add/pin a folder tree there, it should be operable by mouse (open/close subtree, click to open a file in buffer or switch to it) - Have a list of open files / buffers - clicking on it should switch to buffer

Currently looking at treemacs and neotree that were suggested by me. Previously I was giving up trying to configure them, now I may be more persistent.

The site here has some elisp code that puts the speedbar in the current frame. I've just tried it and it seems to work.

https://carnet.danielhan.dev/linux-unix/emacs/speedbar-in-on...

sr-speedbar in melpa seems relevant .

Thanks! Never knew this existed. Would have been better if the sidebar was not shown in a new frame. There are third-party customizations to launch speedbar in the same frame though.

i like it as a separate frame

there’s even a minimap implementation.