Dashboard: collapsed mobile navbar menu stays open after selecting a page

[cwickham]

I have:

• searched the issue tracker for similar issues
• installed the latest version of Quarto CLI
• formatted my issue following the Bug Reports guide

Bug description

In a multi-page format: dashboard at a narrow (mobile) viewport, selecting a page from the collapsed navbar menu switches the page but never closes the menu. This breaks the disclosure pattern users expect (and get from every Quarto website navbar): the open menu eats a large share of a small screen, and keyboard and screen-reader users must go back and dismiss a menu they have already used before reaching the content they selected.

In the default layout the open menu pushes content down; but if the header is pinned via custom CSS, the stuck-open menu overlays the page when scrolled and can leave a keyboard-focused element entirely hidden beneath it (WCAG 2.2 SC 2.4.11 Focus Not Obscured (Minimum)).

Dashboard pages are Bootstrap tabs in the same document, so unlike a website navbar there is no page load to reset the menu — and neither Bootstrap nor Quarto closes it. Quarto already attaches a click handler to every navbar page link (quarto-dashboard.js#L125-L142); hiding the collapse there (bootstrap.Collapse.getOrCreateInstance(el, { toggle: false }).hide()) would keep the show class and ARIA state consistent.

An AI assistant helped investigate, grounded in a local clone of quarto-cli (per CONTRIBUTING.md).

Steps to reproduce

---
title: "Repro: mobile menu stays open"
format: dashboard
---

# Page One

## Row

Content of page one.

{{< lipsum 1 >}}

# Page Two

## Row

Content of page two.

{{< lipsum 1 >}}

1. quarto render the document above and open the resulting HTML in a browser.
2. Narrow the window until the navbar collapses behind the hamburger toggler (below 576 px, or use responsive/mobile emulation in devtools, e.g. 390×844).
3. Click the toggler to open the menu.
4. Click Page Two.

Actual behavior

The page switches, but the menu stays expanded above it: .navbar-collapse keeps the show class and the toggler keeps aria-expanded="true". The user must close the menu manually to reach the page they selected.

Expected behavior

Selecting a page closes the menu and returns the toggler to aria-expanded="false", as on a Quarto website navbar.

Your environment

• IDE: n/a (rendered from the command line; behavior is browser-side)
• OS: macOS 26.5.1 (build 25F80)
• Browsers checked: Chrome 150 (headless + desktop)

Quarto check output

Quarto 1.10.12
[✓] Checking environment information...
      Quarto cache location: /Users/charlottewickham/Library/Caches/quarto
[✓] Checking versions of quarto binary dependencies...
      Pandoc version 3.8.3: OK
      Dart Sass version 1.87.0: OK
      Deno version 2.7.14: OK
      Typst version 0.14.2: OK
[✓] Checking versions of quarto dependencies......OK
[✓] Checking Quarto installation......OK
      Version: 1.10.12
      Path: /Applications/quarto/bin
[✓] Checking tools....................OK
      TinyTeX: v2026.04
      Chrome Headless Shell: 150.0.7871.115
      VeraPDF: 1.28.2
[✓] Checking LaTeX....................OK
      Using: TinyTex
      Path: /Users/charlottewickham/Library/TinyTeX/bin/universal-darwin
      Version: 2026
[✓] Checking Chrome Headless....................OK
      Using: Chrome Headless Shell installed by Quarto
      Path: /Users/charlottewickham/Library/Application Support/quarto/chrome-headless-shell/chrome-headless-shell-mac-arm64/chrome-headless-shell
      Version: 150.0.7871.115
[✓] Checking basic markdown render....OK
[✓] Checking R installation...........OK
      Version: 4.6.0
      Path: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.6/Resources
      LibPaths:
        - /Users/charlottewickham/Library/R/arm64/4.6/library
        - /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.6/Resources/library
      knitr: 1.51
      rmarkdown: 2.31
[✓] Checking Knitr engine render......OK
[✓] Checking Python 3 installation....OK
      Version: 3.12.2
      Path: /Users/charlottewickham/.pyenv/versions/3.12.2/bin/python3
      Jupyter: 5.9.1
      Kernels: python3
[✓] Checking Jupyter engine render....OK
[✓] Checking Julia installation...