Sidebar gaining focus?

[jh]

I sometimes click on a document in the sidebar to select it, and then do a command like Select All, and instead of my document having all its text selected, the sidebar list of documents is selected. It's quite jarring and unexpected.

I'm sure there used to be a preference, either in the UI or by command line, where you would disallow the sidebar getting focus. I can't seem to find that anywhere.

BBEdit 16.0.2 (16A78, Apple Silicon)

Sequoia 15.7.5 (24G624)

TIA

[Rich Siegel]

On 26 Jul 2026, at 19:56, jh wrote:

> I sometimes click on a document in the sidebar to select it, and then do a
> command like Select All, and instead of my document having all its text
> selected, the sidebar list of documents is selected. It's quite jarring and
> unexpected.

Here's an excerpt from the BBEdit 15.0 release notes:

===

The Sidebar preferences have a setting: "Allow keyboard focus". When this is turned on (as it is by default, or if you previously used the expert preference), the sidebar lists in projects, and multi-document windows can acquire keyboard focus (by clicking or tabbing into them), and then conventional keyboard navigation gestures will change the selection.

With this change, sidebar behavior is changed somewhat (tl;dr: it's like Xcode):

the selection highlighting reflects whether or not the sidebar has keyboard focus; the background always reflects the activation state of the window.

When you click in the side bar to select something, keyboard focus goes there (assuming the preference in "Sidebar" is turned on, as it is by default now). Any single click will select a new file, but does not move keyboard focus to the text view. You can double-click on an item, press Return/Enter, or use the Tab key to move keyboard focus as desired.

===

> I'm sure there used to be a preference, either in the UI or by command
> line, where you would disallow the sidebar getting focus. I can't seem to
> find that anywhere.

You'll find it in the "Sidebar" preferences.

R.

--
Rich Siegel Bare Bones Software, Inc.
<sie...@barebones.com> <https://www.barebones.com/>

Someday I'll look back on all this and laugh... until they sedate me.