Sidebar gone forever once hidden?

I’m assuming you are referring to the Gutenberg’s inspector (the sidebar on the right). To hide it, you press on the Gear icon (not star) found on the top right of the editor’s page, and to bring the inspector back, you click on the same Gear icon again. If it’s not working for you, most probably you have JavaScript errors. If that’s the case, start looking at your theme and plugins – replace your theme with one of the default ones, and disable all plugins, as the initial step to diagnose the issue.

Nope, the custom plugin sidebar described in the link. Creates a new button next to the gear. In the linked example it’s a thumbtack.
https://www.ads-software.com/gutenberg/handbook/designers-developers/developers/tutorials/plugin-sidebar-0/plugin-sidebar-1-up-and-running/

• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by rice_crisp.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by rice_crisp.

I think I figured it out. You can’t just throw the code they give you into your theme. Since it’s a “plugin sidebar” it has to be used as a plugin, otherwise WordPress won’t put it under the plugins dropdown (which is where you would re-enable it).

To bring a hidden sidebar back, you need to add PluginSidebarMoreMenuItem to your javascript code.

var registerPlugin = wp.plugins.registerPlugin;
var PluginSidebar = wp.editPost.PluginSidebar;
var PluginSidebarMoreMenuItem = wp.editPost.PluginSidebarMoreMenuItem; // this line is added
var Fragment = wp.element.Fragment; // this line is added
...

    registerPlugin('my-plugin-sidebar', {
        render: function () {
            return el(
                Fragment,
                {},
                el(
                    PluginSidebarMoreMenuItem, {
                        target: 'my-plugin-sidebar'
                    },
                    'My Plugin Sidebar'
                ),
                el(
                    PluginSidebar, {
                        name: 'my-plugin-sidebar',
                        icon: 'admin-post',
                        title: 'My plugin sidebar'
                    },
                    el('div',
                        {className: 'plugin-sidebar-content'},
                        el(MetaBlockField,
                            {fieldName: 'my_plugin_sidebar_meta_block_field'}
                        )
                    ),
                )
            );
        }
    });