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Why doesn't ctrl-t swap characters on Mac?

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  • Last reply by echosa

echosa
echosa
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In most macOS programs when you're typing text, you can use certain keyboard commands to do things. For instance, ctrl-a goes to the beginning of the line, ctrl-e goes to the end of the line, and ctrl-t swaps the two characters around the cursor. In Firefox, though, ctrl-t doesn't work, though ctrl-a and ctrl-e work just fine. Is there a reason ctrl-t doesn't work, and is there a way to get it to work? Thanks in advance.

In most macOS programs when you're typing text, you can use certain keyboard commands to do things. For instance, ctrl-a goes to the beginning of the line, ctrl-e goes to the end of the line, and ctrl-t swaps the two characters around the cursor. In Firefox, though, ctrl-t doesn't work, though ctrl-a and ctrl-e work just fine. Is there a reason ctrl-t doesn't work, and is there a way to get it to work? Thanks in advance.

All Replies (5)

echosa
echosa Question owner
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Update: ctrl-t seems to work on some sites, but not others.

Sites that work: Facebook, Player.me

Sites that don't work: Tweetdeck, Fastmail, DuckDuckGo

Any ideas?

cor-el
cor-el
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That might be the difference of using a plain text editor (test area) or a rich text editor.

echosa
echosa Question owner
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Hm. Maybe, I guess, but it's only an issue in Firefox, not any other browser I use.

echosa
echosa Question owner
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I've done some more checking of some of the sites I named above, as well as a couple of other things. Here's what I've found:

- The Firefox address/search bar: does not work. Not sure how to check or diagnose. - The Firefox page search: does not work. Also don't know how to diagnose. - The Facebook search bar: does not work. This is an HTML input tag. - The Facebook post text area: does work. This is a nested div, I assume that some JavaScript make it act as a text area. - The Player.me post area: does work. This is also a nested div, similar to the Facebook post text area. - The Tweetdeck post area: does not work. This is an HTML textarea tag. - The Twitter post area: does not work. This is nested divs, like Facebook and Player.me, however whereas those sites work, this one does not. - The DuckDuckGo search area: does not work. This is an HTML input tag. - The Fastmail email compose area: does not work. This is nested divs as well. Doesn't work, like Twitter. - This Mozilla Support forum: does not work. This text box I'm typing in right now is an HTML text area.

So, based on all this small sample size, it seems like most of the issues are with actual HTML form/input elements. The exceptions are the Twitter and Fastmail (which use nested divs, but still don't work) and the Firefox UI itself (the URL/search bar).

I wonder if the issue has something to do with the macOS Firefox builds not having full system text support or something. Even the Edit menu is missing some common items, which I've highlighted in the attached screenshot.

Either way, how can we get this fixed?

echosa
echosa Question owner
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Relevant bug report: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1280547