Conditionally show Desk sidebar items based on current user role

You're on the right track! You can't use React hooks like useCurrentUser in sanity.config.ts because it's not a React component. The solution is to use the context parameter that Sanity provides in the configuration callback functions.

In your sanity.config.ts, both the tools and plugins configuration options accept a callback function that receives a context object as the second parameter. This context object includes a currentUser property that you can use to conditionally show/hide tools based on user attributes.

Here's how to do it:

// sanity.config.ts
import { defineConfig } from 'sanity'
import { structureTool } from 'sanity/structure'
import { myCustomTool } from './myCustomTool'

export default defineConfig({
  // ... other config
  
  tools: (prev, context) => {
    const { currentUser } = context
    
    // Filter tools based on user role
    const filteredTools = prev.filter(tool => {
      // Hide settings for non-admins
      if (tool.name === 'settings') {
        return currentUser?.roles.some(role => role.name === 'administrator')
      }
      return true
    })
    
    // Or add tools conditionally based on email
    if (currentUser?.email === 'special@example.com') {
      filteredTools.push(myCustomTool)
    }
    
    return filteredTools
  },
  
  plugins: [
    structureTool({
      structure: (S, context) => {
        // You also have access to currentUser here
        const { currentUser } = context
        
        // Customize your desk structure based on user
        // ...
      }
    })
  ]
})

The Studio configuration documentation confirms that the context object includes both currentUser and getClient. The currentUser object contains properties like:

• email - The user's email address
• roles - An array of role objects with name and title properties
• id - The user's unique identifier

For more complex role-based customizations, you might also want to check out the Studio customizations course on Sanity Learn which covers exactly this use case.

Pro tip: If you're doing this check in multiple places, consider creating a helper function like userHasRole(currentUser, 'administrator') to keep your code DRY and make your configuration more readable.