Context switching prevents external keyboard input in Terminal (iPadOS Safari)

[olivierlacan]

• Not specific to any extension
• VS Code Version: 1.64.2 (GitHub Codespaces)
• OS Version: iPadOS 15.3.1

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Open any GitHub repo in GitHub’s VScode Web Editor (pressing . key on any repo)
2. Create a Codespace or connect to a Codespace (since Terminal is only accessible within a Codespace/Devcontainer)
3. Type text in terminal (Command + J to focus it) and it should print as expected
4. Switch focus to another app with Command + Tab
5. Switch back to VScode/Codespaces, at which point input is no longer possible without first disconnecting and reconnecting the external keyboard (or perhaps triggering the on-screen keyboard some other way) or triggering input with tap events.

Video reproduction:

FullSizeRender.MOV

Expected behavior:

If the keyboard focus is on the terminal the active input device should regain focus when OS context switches back to VSCode. This very well could be an iPadOS Safari bug, but if so it seemed important to document it here since I couldn’t find a specific issue covering this unexpected and disruptive behavior.

[meganrogge]

@rebornix this seems like an ipadOS problem. Thoughts?

[rebornix]

@meganrogge I think this is a focus issue. As long as we use a textarea under the hood, we might get into trouble that the textarea thinks we have focus (no blur happened when users switch to another app) but the page is not actually focused. This is my suspicious and would require some debugging to validate.

[olivierlacan]

@rebornix Is there anything I can do to help debug this?

[mraarone]

Recommend #151626 should be closed as it doesn’t clearly articulate this issue, and both this issue’s and that issue’s last comments reference each other. Also recommend this issue remains open and be addressed.

[alexdima]

Merging #151626 here. Some extra info from there:

Return key doesn’t work neither in terminal nor in text editing.
Reloading the page doesn’t help, BUT unplugging and plugging back the keyboard (just slightly pull iPad off the case)
Closing the application also doesn’t help.
Switching to the other app and back - doesn’t help (in another app return key works)

fyi @joaomoreno

[Tyriar]

/duplicate #163448

[Tyriar]

Help wanted here, to make it clear the team will likely not fix this as those that contribute to the terminal don't have ipads.

[kvc0]

This makes vs code tunnels almost unusable! It seems to affect arrow keys and escape as well as enter.

Normal characters as well as control, option, command, and the emoji meta keys all work. Sometimes I have to fiddle with focus until those buttons work: I can't, however, restore the other meta keys without physically unplugging the keyboard.

[yocjyet]

On-screen keyboard works fine, but not for physical attached one (at least on the offcial Apple one)

[RaddishIoW]

There is a workaround I found here:

coder/code-server#5221 (comment)