Hiding content in your site | Fern Documentation

Fern provides two settings for hiding content: hidden: true (set in docs.yml) removes pages, sections, or versions from the sidebar, and noindex: true (set in page frontmatter) removes pages from search engines and llms.txt.

Hiding a page

For individual pages, you’ll typically want both settings together. If a page doesn’t belong in your sidebar, it likely shouldn’t appear in search results either — for example, deprecated content, internal references, or partner-specific guides.

You also can use either setting individually. For example, use noindex: true without hidden to keep a page in the sidebar while hiding it from search results — useful for early-access documentation you don’t want indexed yet. For more SEO-related options, see SEO metadata.

Set hidden: true in docs.yml and noindex: true in the page’s frontmatter:

docs.yml

1 navigation:
2   - section: Introduction
3     contents:
4       - page: My Page
5         path: ./pages/my-page.mdx
6       - page: Hide and Seek
7         hidden: true
8         path: ./pages/hide-and-seek.mdx
9   - api: API Reference

hide-and-seek.mdx

1 ---
2 title: Hide and seek
3 noindex: true
4 ---

See it in action

This page is hidden from the sidebar and search engines, but you can access it by direct link.

Hiding a section or version

You can also hide an entire section or version from the sidebar — for example, a legacy API version or a section of internal tooling docs.

All pages within the hidden section or version remain accessible by URL and indexed by search engines. To also exclude individual pages from search engines, add noindex: true to each page’s frontmatter.

Hidden section

Hidden version

docs.yml

1 navigation:
2   - section: Introduction
3     contents:
4       - page: My Page
5         path: ./pages/my-page.mdx
6   - api: API Reference
7   - section: Hidden Section
8     hidden: true
9     contents:
10       - page: Hide and Seek
11         path: ./pages/hide-and-seek.mdx