Shortcuts

[auchri]

The goal of this issue is to add the following shortcuts:

Usage

• [x] Lock telegram with CTRL + L
• [ ] Minimize to tray (CTRL + X if no text is selected, CMD + M on mac) or open it, if it's already minimized (see #748, global hotkey)
• [x] Completely close telegram (CTRL + Q, CTRL + W for windows)
• [ ] Open emoji panel when pressing TAB in text field
• [ ] Insert last sent message into the text field with CTRL + Up, on mac CMD + Up
• [ ] Mac Fullscreen-Mode CMD + CTRL + F (See #1904)
• [ ] Home when message editor empty: go to beginning of message history.
• [ ] End when message editor empty: go to end of message history.
• [ ] Shift + Click in selection mode (see 4 in #2404)
• [ ] Switch between two last chats (see #3303)
• [ ] Log Out (see #4251)

Voice messages

• [ ] CTRL + R to start recording
• [ ] CTRL + R to stop and send recording
• [ ] CTRL + shift (⇧) + R cancel recording

Emoji

• [ ] Tab (Single press) - Open Emoji menu
• [ ] Tab (In Emoji menu or ultraDoubleTabPressing) - Open Stickers menu
• [ ] Shift + ← (in Stickers menu, when focused at first sticker pack) - Open GIFs menu
• [ ] Shift + → (in GIFs menu) - Back to the stickers
• [ ] Shift + → (in Stickers menu) - Next sticker pack
• [ ] Shift + ← (in Stickers menu) - Previous sticker pack
• [ ] ↑↓ - Move Up / Move Down
• [ ] ←→ - Move Left / Move Right
• [ ] SPACE - Insert Emoji (no menu closing) / Send Sticker or GIF (and close menu)
• [ ] Esc - Close menu

(by @DaFri-Nochiterov at #1706)

Other

• [ ] Native back/forward mouse button support
• [ ] Shortcut to delete conversation
• [ ] Add option to disable shortcuts
• [ ] Shortcut to switch night mode
• [ ] And also add an overview which shortcuts are available (CTRL + F to search in current conversation, ...)

(Summary of #3163, #1904, #1706, #1688, #1330, #1244, #1139, #949, #873, #853, #830, #782, #703 and #78)

[ralesk]

I guess a related thing would be to make up and down arrows work reliably (sometimes they do nothing, sometimes they scroll the chat history — I'd be perfectly fine if they only ever navigated in the text entry and history scrollback would be pageup/pagedown instead, kinda like in Skype)

[auchri]

@ralesk Scrolling through the history with page up/page down works for me

[ralesk]

I know, I missed the word "only" there. My problem is the way the arrows work.

[Geobert]

Please make it configurable: some people do not use classical keyboard layout (think dvorak, bépo, colemark etc…)

[auchri]

@Geobert thanks, added it to the list :)

[xander13th]

[Minimize to tray] and [opening] can be implemented by one hotkey (see #748 for details). Anyway i'm happy to see hotkeys in to-do list :)

[tostiheld]

how is the progress on this issue? any way i could help?

[poxin13]

:+1: Yes please! Running this on a chromebook within crouton, there is no taskbar in order to close - have to kill the app. Major PITA here :)

[terryaney]

Are there any keyboard shortcuts? Specifically looking for a shortcut to get me to the 'search' field...otherwise, what is the 'keyboard' mechanism to start a chat with a new person?

[Walkman100]

Ctrl + F searches the current chat, Esc closes the current chat and focuses the search all box.

[erisdev]

would be nice to have cmd-{ and cmd-} switch between conversations on mac os x since those are standard issue shortcuts for switching between tabs here.

i realize ctrl-tab and shift-ctrl-tab are available but those are exceedingly difficult to type with only a left ctrl key.

[Walkman100]

Woah, Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab are really useful, thanks for sharing. On the contrary, I think those are nicer to press with the left ctrl key, because then I can keep my right hand on the mouse

[damaru2]

Why don't also letting the user to change the keys that trigger the shortcuts?

[erisdev]

@Walkman100 ymmv of course. i'm on a notebook so my trackpad's always in thumb's reach, but i usually keep both hands on the keyboard anyways unless i'm using an art program.

in my case, ctrl-tab requires me to move my left hand far away from the home row position and shift-ctrl-tab is worse. the standard mac keys can be done with only a slight movement of my right hand.

[nicho90]

I was missing the CMD + CTRL + F Shortcut for Fullscreen-Mode on MacOS, so added a new issue with [Feature-request for fullscreen-mode] #1904 before I saw there is already an issue about shortcuts. Feel free to add this shortcut to the list above and close my issue then.

[toxsedyshev]

Insert last sent message into the text field with CTRL + Up

Like in command line? But what about quick edit?

[nicho90]

Thank you @auchri! 👍

[stek29]

@toxsedyshev maybe edit if allowed, and just insert if can't edit?

[toxsedyshev]

@stek29 In that case, how to insert if edit allowed? :) No, I think there should be two separate commands.

[LeonelF]

Ctrl + L should lock the telegram (as it does right now) and minimize to the tray, that would be an awesome feature

[john-preston]

@LeonelF Use Ctrl+L Ctrl+W :)

[LeonelF]

@john-preston That is what I do, but it would be nice that Ctrl+L do both since you lock it there is no point to keep it on screen, I bet that almost every user that blocks telegram will minimize to tray after blocking it.

[toxsedyshev]

@LeonelF I don't :)

[Walkman100]

I've recently seen a shortcuts-custom.json file in the tdata folder, is this file used to customise commands? if so, @LeonelF you could add a rule to Ctrl+L to make it minimise, then see if Ctrl+L locks & minimises Telegram. (As a side note: WOOT telegramdesktop is FINALLY a GitHub org!)

[auchri]

I've recently seen a shortcuts-custom.json file in the tdata folder, is this file used to customise commands?

Yes.

(As a side note: WOOT telegramdesktop is FINALLY a GitHub org!)

:tada:

[LeonelF]

@Walkman100 I found the file and the command, { "command": "lock_telegram", "keys": "ctrl+l" },

But this doesn't seem to be able to aggregate two commands for one key combination, does it?

[john-preston]

@LeonelF No aggregation, sorry.

[LeonelF]

@john-preston It would be needed to have a command like lock_and_close_telegram so I could assign it to a key combination. Can it be done? :)

[stek29]

Open emoji panel when pressing TAB in text field

Should I make a PR for this one? I already implemented it here.

[ralesk]

I don't think a movement key should open anything. In normal GUI programs we activate things to open them.

This is also an accessibility thing (though I'm unsure if Orca or NVDA reads Telegram at the moment, for example): When you want to navigate, you expect not to trigger anything with the navigation. Actually I have the same grief with the hover-popup of the file and emoji menus, it makes it cumbersome (even for a non-handicapped person) to avoid triggering those popups accidentally.

[MasterGroosha]

Maybe Ctrl+Up to edit last message and Ctrl+Down to reply to last message?

[toxsedyshev]

@ralesk Quick edit by Up key is default behavior in all modern messengers like Skype, Slack, etc. Telegram is a messenger, first of all.

[MasterGroosha]

@toxsedyshev This completely ruins scrolling. I mean, in channels up/down scrolls, but in normal chats - no. That ruins experience while using Telegam.

[0x49D1]

@Kondra007 came to this thread to say that! Edit message gonna be nice addition(for now we need to right click and Delete the message) and Ctrl+Up seems OK hotkey for the action.

[ralesk]

@toxsedyshev My reply was about the Tab key, sorry if that wasn't clear.

[ralesk]

@Kondra007 @0x49D1 I side with @toxsedyshev on this one though, in other common messengers (Skype, Slack), even IRC clients (Quassel) page up and page down is what scrolls the chat history, up and down navigates inside the edit box, and it's very common that Up on an empty entry loads the previous comment for editing. This is what people are used to.

Ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down could be used to access entry history — not editing, creating a new message with the same text; this might not be useful in Telegram, but also a fairly common feature of IRC clients for example. In slack, the Ctrl-ness can be switched with a setting.

Ctrl+Down for reply is entirely non-mnemonic to me.

[toxsedyshev]

@Kondra007 Yes, but who needs one-line scroll using "key up"? You have "page up", mouse wheel, search. That's why other messengers don't scroll by "key up" too.

[toxsedyshev]

@ralesk +1 about Ctrl+Down, who needs to reply to the last message with a quote? :)

[MasterGroosha]

@ralesk regarding "up" and "down":
Ctrl+Up to edit, because you update your message which is already in chat. Ctrl+Down to reply, because you add new message below others (and it's reply, since simple message can be sent without hitting any shortcuts)

@toxsedyshev "who needs to reply to the last message with a quote?" It's really important in big groups where several dialogues may be present at once. Or just to express emotion on opinion (+1, -1 etc. since Telegram lacks of this by default)

[ralesk]

Addendum (again from an accessibility view): if the chat history bit will be made focusable, then it would be useful to navigate with up and down there, effectively selecting/highlighting (whatever you want to call it) a particular message, and then pressing a reply shortcut for example (Ctrl+R reply, Ctrl+F forward, anyone? Like in a mail client?) will be actually useful. Until then, Up/Down doing what they do now is kinda confusing and annoying to be honest

[ralesk]

@Kondra007 if it's a reply to the last message, there's not too much need for the reply-ness :) Although I do understand that it fixes any ambiguity.

[MasterGroosha]

@ralesk Unfortunately, when you start replying to currently the last message in big chats, there may appear 1-5 more by the time you finish answering. Common case in big groups I think.

[ralesk]

@Kondra007 Good point.

[toxsedyshev]

@Kondra007 you could just send a message and everybody understand that it's a reply for the last message. If you always reply with quotes, it makes chat unreadable, from my point.

[toxsedyshev]

@Kondra007 Yep, good point, but anyway it's unreadable when used for every reply...

[MasterGroosha]

@toxsedyshev No one suggests always making a reply, but still replies are very important in Telegram, since we have supergroups up to 5k.
That's only my personal opinion, of course.

[toxsedyshev]

In that case how to use it? If you want to reply to particular message with a quote but it's already not the last message :) Maybe several presses of Ctrl+Down?

[MasterGroosha]

No, you understood me wrong.
By the time you start replying, that particular message is the last one, but no one guarantees, that after finishing writing the message there won't be 1-5 another from other people and on different topic. See the difference? Just an obvious example:

A: Let's go for walk. You start writing "good idea, I wanted to do this since morning" B: By the way, did you see Sam posting shitty stickers here yesterday? C: Yeah. D: That's disgusting E: Shall we ban him? You: good idea, I wanted to do this since morning (just finished writing)

[toxsedyshev]

No, I understood you right. But you said "No one suggests always making a reply". If you don't reply to every message with a quote, one press of Ctrl+Down won't work. If you do - it makes chat unreadable.

[MasterGroosha]

Errrm..what? If you want to quickly start replying to the last message without ever touching your mouse, you can press Ctrl+Down and start replying. However if you're sure you'll be understood correctly (see my example above), you may simply write a message without any replies.

What is more, replies allow to quickly scroll through the whole discussion on particular topic reading only relevant messages and automatically skipping irrelevant ones (since you can click on reply and watch that message and so on)