Deleting blocks with Delete or Backspace is not working properly

Describe the bug

Whenever you select a whole block with its button on the left you are not able to delete it with Delete or Backspace. It works when you move mouse cursor to the pop-up menu (though not always, but I haven’t been able to find a pattern. So the block will not be deleted when mouse is in position 1 in screenshot, and may be deleted when mouse is in position 2.

To Reproduce

    1. Create a block
    1. Select it by clicking its button (the one that shows on the left when you hover over the block).
    1. Press Delete/Backspace – the block won’t be deleted.
    1. Move mouse cursor to pop-up menu and press Delete/Backspace - the block may or mey not be deleted.

Expected behavior

The block should be deleted with Delete/Backspace wherever mouse cursor is.

Desktop (please complete the following information):

OS: Windows 10

1 Like

This is not a bug. When your cursor is not hovering over any of the items in the pop up menu, Anytype expects you to enter a filter name (for an action like deleting, duplicating, turning the object into a header etc.) Therefore, when you press backspace, it treats it as if you are deleting a letter in the filter text field. When you hover your cursor over any of the items in the menu, though, it changes the focus from the filter field to whatever option the cursor is on; allowing you to delete the block with a backspace. It is similar to Notion, though the focus won’t change there.

If you want to delete when your cursor is around “1” in the image you posted, just type ‘del’ and hit enter. You could also type /del without ever leaving the line and hit either tab or enter.

The ‘Delete’ option in the menu appears to be working every time in my case on Anytype 0.16.7.

@BGray Alright, thank you. I got used to delete blocks immediately after selecting them in Notion. There it works both with Delete and Backspace keys if the ‘Filter actions…’ textbox is empty. Perhaps I should make this a feature request?

Also it appears the Delete/Backspace does not do anything when the cursor is over the top half of the menu, in this area:

@Tymoteusz What version of Anytype are you on? For me, backspace does delete the block when the cursor is in that area on Windows 10.

It does make sense to me. Please file a feature request.

@BGray

Version 0.16.7, which seems the latest.

@Tymoteusz Okay, I got it, I think now we are on the same page. When you hover over any of the options that show a submenu, the focus moves away from the filter, that’s why you cannot do a backspace/delete when the cursor is on one of the top three options. We should call this one a bug.

I also noticed another bug here:

Describe the bug

You cannot cycle through the block options menu to switch back to the filter field.

To Reproduce

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

    1. Create/Open a document.
    1. Create/Have a block other than the title.
    1. Click the three dot menu that’s next to the block.
    1. Use the arrow keys to cycle through the options. You will not be able to go back to Filter.

Expected behavior

Filter should be included when cycling through the options.

Desktop

  • OS: Windows 10, 1909
  • Version: 0.16.7
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This behavior is the same in v0.25.0 of the desktop app. After selecting a block using the pill, one cannot use Del to delete the block or even Ctrl+D to duplicate it. Triple clicking on a block to select it and using the shortcuts works as they should

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@Flip this is working for me on 0.29.0. After selecting one or more blocks with either the keyboard or the mouse deleting works with both DEL and Backspace.

1 Like

This doesn’t worked a few minutes ago. Now it does. I will keep an eye on that.

Fixed in 0.29.0

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