Alt-Enter in file picker does nothing

[jose-elias-alvarez]

Summary

The Alt-Enter picker keybinding added in #4435 does not work for me on macOS, independent of which terminal emulator I'm using. (I'm unsure if the issue is macOS-specific, but other reports seem to indicate that it works on other platforms.) Instead of opening the selected file in the background, the keybinding does nothing.

This issue differs from #2280 / other macOS Alt-related issues I've found in that I can confirm that I've properly configured my terminal emulator to treat the Option key as Alt. I've tested Helix on Terminal.app, iTerm, WezTerm, Kitty, Ghostty, and Warp and have seen the same behavior across all of them. I can also confirm that the terminal is receiving the correct keys:

All other Alt key bindings do work in Helix, and if I manually set up an A-ret keybinding for normal or insert mode in my Helix config, it also works, indicating that Helix is receiving the correct keys outside of the picker (I've also tested the same in Neovim).

Finally, I also tried building Helix using brew install --HEAD helix and still saw the issue.

Reproduction Steps

I tried this:

1. hx
2. Open file picker with <Space>f
3. Select a file and press Alt-Enter

I expected this to happen:

The selected file is opened in the background, as per #4435.

Instead, this happened:

Nothing happens.

Helix log

There's nothing relevant in the log, but here it is (I cleared it before running the reproduction steps above):

~/.cache/helix/helix.log

2025-01-03T13:56:10.319 helix_lsp::transport [ERROR] bash-language-server err <- "(node:78283) [DEP0040] DeprecationWarning: The `punycode` module is deprecated. Please use a userland alternative instead.\n"
2025-01-03T13:56:10.319 helix_lsp::transport [ERROR] bash-language-server err <- "(Use `node --trace-deprecation ...` to show where the warning was created)\n"

Platform

macOS Sequoia 15.2

Terminal Emulator

iTerm 3.5.11 (but as mentioned I replicated the issue on just about every macOS terminal emulator)

Installation Method

brew

Helix Version

helix 24.7 (079f544)

[the-mikedavis]

If the behavior is consistent across all terminal emulators then it sounds to me like macOS is eating the A-ret combination. Maybe the macOS settings have this set to something and unsetting it will allow A-ret to pass through to the terminal and Helix?

[jose-elias-alvarez]

I also thought this might be the case, but manually creating an A-ret binding in Helix works in both normal mode and insert mode. It's only in the picker that it fails to work. Is there some way I can help debug this?

[the-mikedavis]

For some basic printf debugging you can add a line like log::error!("handling A-ret"); in this block in the picker:

helix/helix-term/src/ui/picker.rs

Lines 1015 to 1019 in 917174e

	alt!(Enter) => {
	if let Some(option) = self.selection() {
	(self.callback_fn)(ctx, option, Action::Load);
	}
	}

and tail the log (tail -f ~/.cache/helix/helix.log) to see if the key event is arriving

[tgross35]

On a similar note, is it possible to map a different key combination to this action? I don't see a relevant name in #4435 or in the command pallet.

Wezterm unfortunately eats this binding for me and unfortunately I don't believe it's trivial to disable a single default.

[the-mikedavis]

Currently keybindings for components can't be changed (#5505)

[warmwaffles]

I'm experiencing this in Linux with Ghostty and Alacritty as well. Using latest from master.

Opens the file, just doesn't make the current buffer become that file.

[the-mikedavis]

Also note that A-ret in the picker loads the file in the background so it will not replace the currently open document. You need to open the buffer picker to see whether the file was loaded

[warmwaffles]

Ugh, I should have realized that.

[jose-elias-alvarez]

Ahh I see, the binding was working but I also did not realize that files were being loaded in the background. Given that I'm not the only one who was confused by this, I wonder if it makes sense to change the behavior here somehow.

My understanding is that this feature was meant to allow opening multiple files without closing the picker, so in my head, it makes sense for it to load the file in the foreground but leave the picker open, but if not, some other form of feedback would be nice.

[warmwaffles]

I was going to suggest something along the lines of opening the file and switching to that buffer or at minimum providing some sort of message / affirmation that it was opened.