Fix: Change copy filepath shortcut from CTRL+Q to CTRL+Y for macOS compatibility (Fixes #617)

[AdityaGupta716]

closes #617

What is this PR
Bug fix

Why is this PR needed?
Issue #617 reported that CTRL+Q quits the application on macOS, making it impossible to use the copy filepath shortcut on that platform. CTRL+W and CTRL+K were also considered but both have conflicts on macOS (CTRL+W deletes a word, CTRL+K deletes to end of line). CTRL+Y has no conflicts on any platform.

What does this PR do?

• Changes the key binding from ctrl+q to ctrl+y in custom_widgets.py
• Updates tooltips in tooltips.py and app.py
• Updates docs in create-folders.md and getting-started.md
• Updates tests in test_tui_directorytree.py

Tested locally on macOS — CTRL+Y copies filepath correctly without any conflicts.

[AdityaGupta716]

Hey @JoeZiminski, just to give some context the previous PR #681 was accidentally closed when I force-pushed main while syncing my fork with upstream, sorry about that. In this PR I also reconsidered the shortcut key CTRL+W deletes a word and CTRL+K deletes to end of line on macOS, so both had the same problem as CTRL+Q. Went with CTRL+Y instead which has no conflicts on macOS. Since textual captures keystrokes internally, OS-level shortcuts like redo on Windows shouldn't interfere either. Tested locally on macOS and it works perfectly.

[JoeZiminski]

Hi @AdityaGupta716 thanks for this! Really appreciate the testing, I will look into this in the next couple of days and merge as a priority, I think it would be good to include this in the upcoming release.

[EDIT: no worries at all about the PR closing / force push! These issues are very common]

[JoeZiminski]

Hi @AdityaGupta716 thanks again for this, could you confirm that it is indeed CTRL+Q that quits the application, rather than command (CMD) key, i.e. CMD+Q? (the issue was recently updated). I could not replicate CTRL+Q closing the application on macOS.

Unfortunately, the CMD key in macOS cannot be read by the terminal, or at least is not by default, meaning we cannot use CMD as a shortcut. The CMD key does a lot of default macOS behaviour which is very confusing. At the moment I think there is simply no workaround, which is frustrating.

It might still be worth changing the CTRL+Q to CTRL+Y because even if CTRL+Q does not close the application, people are likely to confuse it with CMD+Q then close the application, which is confusing. In your hands, does it immediately close the application, or do you get a pop-up? I would immediately change it to CTRL+Y, but for backwards compatibility reasons it would be nice to keep with CTRL+Q unless it is prohibitively annoying.

I think at least, we can add a warning to the documentation (maybe the install page, and choosing a terminal page).

[AdityaGupta716]

Hi @JoeZiminski, CTRL+Q is clean and even if we press CMD+Q by mistake on Mac a popup comes up that tells us "do you want to terminate the terminal" so the user at least knows what happened. CTRL+Y also has no conflicts on macOS or Windows, and since CMD+Q gives a popup the user will know they haven't copied, but CMD+Y won't give anything so the user may get stuck for a few seconds thinking what did they do wrong. Either way Mac people won't get the command key so it's fine to pick anything.
I think the cleanest fix here is to just make ctrl+c the actual copy shortcut and remove the current ctrl+c help notification entirely. The notification only exists because copy wasn't working properly — once ctrl+c copies the filepath directly there's no need for it anymore. ctrl+y is arbitrary and nobody would guess it, ctrl+c is what every user already expects for copy and it works fine in the TUI on both Mac and Windows unlike cmd+c.
I've made the changes — this PR already contains them. ctrl+c now copies, and the old ctrl+c help notification is removed since it's no longer needed. and CTRL Q is not needed since esc is what is normally used to quit the TUI,and the test fail is unrelated .

[JoeZiminski]

Hi @AdityaGupta716 thanks for your thoughts on this and looking into it further with CTRL+C. I'm glad you mentioned about the pop-up reminding users they may have pressed the wrong button, that was my thinking too. In this case, it's good to know CTRL+Q is workable.

Thanks also for investigating CTRL+C. funnily enough we did used to have CTRL+C for the copy behavior, but it lead to some problems. In theory textual should take the CTRL+C event and not let it close the terminal (which can happen on Windows). However in practice this behavior was not consistent, and sometimes on Windows CTRL+C would close the terminal (see #573). This is quite unfortunate, as it would otherwise be a nice solution! Unfortunately handling these shortcuts cross-platform through the terminal is very tricky :(

[AdityaGupta716]

@JoeZiminski, seems like ctrl+q is actually the best cross-platform choice — works fine on macOS, no issues on Windows either. Unless there's something else you'd like me to look into, I think this PR and issue can be closed!

[JoeZiminski]

Thanks @AdityaGupta716 I agree we can close this, thanks a lot for looking into this, the research and discussing through ideas has been very useful! Cheers