Always visible sidebar menu

I really don’t have much need to show/hide the sidebar menu. I would like to either show it by default (with the option of hiding it) or perhaps have an “icons only” sidebar that is always visible. I have to open and close it so many times per session.

I feel you.

I’m not a designer, so I’ve had a few iterations that are all more/less worse than each other.

I’m worried about icon-only because some things might not be obvious (or maybe I need to change the navigation options so that it is).