Open note disappears when you press escape, even when sidebars are hidden

[nth-chile]

Description

Sometimes when I'm editing a note, I accidentally press escape and the note disappears from the editor pane. This is especially frustrating when the sidebars are hidden. I know that pressing escape moves the cursor to the search field, but I don't see why it should clear the editor pane. It's also a little chaotic that typing in the search field selects notes and makes them show up in the editor. As I type more letters into the search field, the notes in the editor are flashing by. Usually at this point I just remember the name of the note I was working on and type it in to get it to show up again.

Sometimes I want to use the search field but I don't want my current note to disappear until I click on the next note that I'm searching for.

To Reproduce

1. Select a note
2. Hide sidebars
3. Press escape
4. Screen goes blank. If you press any letter key, a different note opens

Expected behavior

• Pressing escape shouldn't close the open note
• Typing in the search bar should not open notes

FSNotes version

6

macOS/iOS version

13

Additional context

No response

[tewe]

Typing in the search bar should definitely open notes, that's the whole point of the thing.

You can use ⌘ L instead of ESC to jump to the search bar without clearing the editor.

[nth-chile]

Why can't it work like Xcode, VSCode, Sublime Text, Notion. Bear, Apple Notes, etc. by not flashing notes across the editor?

[tewe]

Apple Notes works exactly the same, except it waits some milliseconds for you to finish typing before it updates the results list. So it is slower to use. That's why somebody created Notational Velocity (meaning fast) which FSNotes is inspired by.

[nth-chile]

Alright, true. But I would say two changes could be made to make it more intentional, since I seem to do it accidentally and lose my note:

• pressing escape could select and highlight the current search (highlight so if you type then it goes away) but, like Apple Notes, don't clear the editor. Only replace the current note once user starts typing and search query selects another notes
• if the notes list is hidden, then it should show when you press the hotkey. For example, pressing escape while notes list is hidden would be the equivalent of pressing cmd + shift + b, esc

I might be able to submit a couple of PRs for those two things actually

[tewe]

As I said, ⌘ L fulfils both of your requirements, though there seems to be a bug where it sometimes shows a pop-up menu and you have to hit it again to unhide the notes list.

[nth-chile]

True.

🤔 I'll have to pay attention next time to see why I press escape and expect something else. Maybe to deselect text?

Is it strange that it's even possible to use the sidebars while they are hidden?