DTTG and alt-tab

DEVONthink To Go
1

I’ve been meaning to mention this for ages, but have only just got around to it. Sorry for the delay…

DTTG is set up quite nicely for use with an external keyboard (in my case the second generation of the Magic Keyboard on an iPad Pro, but I also get this with a first generation Smart Keyboard and older iPad Pro), but there’s one obvious problem: alt-tab doesn’t register. So you can alt-tab into DTTG from another app, but you can’t alt-tab back out of it.

Is this such a niche use that nobody else has come across the problem or am I doing something wrong?

Thanks…

2

Is this such a niche use

On Apple mobile: yes, I’d say so. There are tons of people that don’t even know it’s a thing on macOS. So I’d say it’s not ”one obvious problem” :wink:

3

How odd… always baffles me that people like to use that stupid mouse thingy instead of a Proper Decent Keyboard Like Nature Intended.

Anyway, niche or not, is it a bug? Alt-tab is built into iPadOS, I think, as DTTG is the only program I’ve come across where it doesn’t work.

Cheers!

4

I don’t know if it’s a bug or not. @eboehnisch would have to weigh in on that.

5

We don’t do anything special related to the Alt-Tab command key combination (and we even couldn’t as it’s a system key combination). I presume that it might be something DEVONthink To Go does interacting with something iOS does in a way Apple has not foreseen.

Unfortunately, the behavior is not consistent and so hard to reproduce. Or better: It’s hard to change something in the app and consistently check if we fixed the issue from our side or not.

Maybe @aedwards has some ideas as it might have something to do with the context menus?

6

I’ve noticed this in other apps too (e.g. banking). But not always - usually it works but sometimes not.

1 Like
7

Thanks, @eboehnisch and @cgrunenberg!

Actually, it is consistent for me, even if I don’t interact with DTTG in any way. What I always see, without fail, is:

  • from any other app, alt-tab until DTTG is the foremost app (with Stage Manager switched off and no other shared window).
  • when you get to DTTG, don’t press any other keys or touch the screen, but press alt-tab again.
  • the alt-tab sequence is broken and you can only get to another app by swiping up.

(To be clear: even if you do interact with DTTG, alt-tab won’t work then either.)

I don’t see this with any other app (I’ve just tried my banking app to check Cris’s point), though of course I can’t try every one…

Obviously I’m happy to try to test anything if it will help.

Thanks again.

[EDIT]: Something interesting: alt-tab does work every time when you’re using Stage Manager… Not sure if it helps diagnose the problem, but it does give us a work around! It also gives me a reason to try to get used to Stage Manager, which I’ve so far avoided :grinning:)

8

DTTG does not do anything special with these key commands and context menus would not affect them as the keystrokes would be intercepted by iOS before being passed to DTTG.

I had similar behaviour some months ago whilst using Apple’s Pages app, powering off, and restarting my iPad resolved the issue.