A widget with two panes, arranged either horizontally or vertically.

The division between the two panes is adjustable by the user by dragging a handle.

Child widgets are added to the panes of the widget with gtk_paned_set_start_child() and gtk_paned_set_end_child(). The division between the two children is set by default from the size requests of the children, but it can be adjusted by the user.

A paned widget draws a separator between the two child widgets and a small handle that the user can drag to adjust the division. It does not draw any relief around the children or around the separator. (The space in which the separator is called the gutter.) Often, it is useful to put each child inside a GtkFrame so that the gutter appears as a ridge. No separator is drawn if one of the children is missing.

Each child has two options that can be set, “resize” and “shrink”. If “resize” is true then, when the GtkPaned is resized, that child will expand or shrink along with the paned widget. If “shrink” is true, then that child can be made smaller than its requisition by the user. Setting “shrink” to false allows the application to set a minimum size. If “resize” is false for both children, then this is treated as if “resize” is true for both children.

The application can set the position of the slider as if it were set by the user, by calling gtk_paned_set_position().

CSS nodes

paned
├── <child>
├── separator[.wide]
╰── <child>

GtkPaned has a main CSS node with name paned, and a subnode for the separator with name separator. The subnode gets a .wide style class when the paned is supposed to be wide.

In horizontal orientation, the nodes are arranged based on the text direction, so in left-to-right mode, :first-child will select the leftmost child, while it will select the rightmost child in RTL layouts.

Creating a paned widget with minimum sizes.

GtkWidget *hpaned = gtk_paned_new (GTK_ORIENTATION_HORIZONTAL);
GtkWidget *frame1 = gtk_frame_new (NULL);
GtkWidget *frame2 = gtk_frame_new (NULL);

gtk_widget_set_size_request (hpaned, 200, -1);

gtk_paned_set_start_child (GTK_PANED (hpaned), frame1);
gtk_paned_set_resize_start_child (GTK_PANED (hpaned), TRUE);
gtk_paned_set_shrink_start_child (GTK_PANED (hpaned), FALSE);
gtk_widget_set_size_request (frame1, 50, -1);

gtk_paned_set_end_child (GTK_PANED (hpaned), frame2);
gtk_paned_set_resize_end_child (GTK_PANED (hpaned), FALSE);
gtk_paned_set_shrink_end_child (GTK_PANED (hpaned), FALSE);
gtk_widget_set_size_request (frame2, 50, -1);