When opening Signal from tray icon, focus is on the menu and not on the input message text area

[ngleb]

• I have searched open and closed issues for duplicates

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Bug Description

When I click on the tray icon to open Signal window, it opens with focus on the menu instead of the message text input area. This issue did not happen on previous version 1.39.6, started to happen on 1.40.0.

I tried to hide menu bar in Preferences, but it did not help. The focus is not on the menu, but it is also not on the text input area as well.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Signal is closed.
2. Start Signal with these options --use-tray-icon --start-in-tray.
3. Click tray icon. After the first start, no chats are opened and I see "Welcome to Signal" page.
4. Open any chat. I only have personal chats, not sure about groups.
5. Focus moves to the input area where you type in a message.
6. Close Signal window by clicking on the top right X button or press Alt+F4.
7. Click the tray icon area with left mouse button. Alternatively, right click on the tray icon to open Signal menu and then click Show.

Actual Result:

Focus is on the menu area (menu File is highlighted). I have to press Esc or click on the message input area with a mouse cursor to actually type in any message. After testing it again, even pressing Esc does not work.

Expected Result:

Signal is focused on the text input area to type in new messages.

Screenshots

Platform Info

Signal Version: 1.40.0.

Operating System: Gentoo Linux 5.10.17 64 bit, Xfce 4.16 with official tray icon plugin that supports "Tray icon area" or "Status Notifier area" (I think that Signal uses Tray Icon area section).

Gentoo provides official binary version of Signal. Gentoo is my primary system, but I have another system which is Xubuntu 20.04 and the problem is the same. Signal was updated to 1.40.0 from 1.39.6, and opening window focuses on menu, not on message input area.

Linked Device Version: Android 5.3.12

Link to Debug Log

https://debuglogs.org/88b442a06809f9bb49ed4722a1fc3ff60b4341060221f3fb15451dc7139e0998

[hiqua]

I assume you know that, and it's only a workaround, but if Esc does not work (not sure in which case that happens), Alt-Up Alt-Down should allow you to get the focus back to the composer.

Ctrl-Shift-T is also supposed to be the dedicated shortcut to focus the composer.

Obviously it would be better if it behaved as you expected.

It would be interesting to see if #4998 or a similar change would be a suitable workaround (to allow you to type right away no matter where the focus is).

[ngleb]

Alt-Up and Alt-Down also does not work for me. The focus is on the menu and pressing these combinations opens File menu.

[ngleb]

So, the issue is resolved itself after Signal was updated to 5.25. I checked it on the two systems I use (Xubuntu and Gentoo, both mentioned in the original post).

I wonder what has caused this. I didn't see anything in the changelog about this ticket.

[EvanHahn-Signal]

@ngleb Is everything fixed? Or just the shortcuts? (If the former, could you close this issue to save us some time?)

[ngleb]

@EvanHahn-Signal I actually forgot about shortcuts. The only issue bothered me is the one described in the first message. This issue is now fixed. Shortcuts didn't help so I didn't use them.

I have also checked shortcuts, and they partially work. If focus is on the menu (press Alt), then pressing Alt + Up or Alt + Down do work.

But Ctrl + Shift + T doesn't work. I need to press Esc first. Not sure if this is expected.

If focus is not on the menu, then Ctrl + Shift + T works.

[EvanHahn-Signal]

I'm going to close this issue because it sounds like it's resolved. We'll take a look at the shortcuts separately.