Shift+Enter always submits, breaking PSReadline features [Windows.Terminal]

Your Windows build number: (Type ver at a Windows Command Prompt)

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.18362.86]

What you're doing and what's happening: (Copy & paste specific commands and their output, or include screen shots)

Trying to add an empty line in a multi-line input by pressing Shift + Enter with PSReadline in PowerShell

What's wrong / what should be happening instead:

Shift+Enter is treated as Enter, and it tries to run my incomplete command line

So I'm not sure this is fixable without a lot of work.

Because the Windows Terminal is using ConPTY as a backend, we can only send keypresses to the attached client app that are encodable by VT sequences. Unfortunately, there's no way to differentiate between Enter and Shift+Enter with just VT.

So, we need to add support for encoding entire INPUT_RECORDs as VT sequences. Then add support to conpty (in InputStatemachineEngine.*) for parsing such an input record. Then we need to enable the terminal to tell conpty that it should expect such a type of input sequences, and the terminal needs to be able to synthesize them.

It's something that's doable, but not without at least a weeks worth of work, not including testing.

Ouch. Didn't even think of that.

At least in PSReadLine it's settable, so I will just have to try to learn to use Ctrl+Enter instead
... that seems to send a linefeed instead of a carriage return, so it's detectable.

There's probably a bigger picture here about helping those of us who aren't used to VT learn which combinations just aren't going to work...

This actually seems to be a bit of a broader problem--a lot of PSReadLine hotkeys that use Ctrl+ chords don't work either. Ctrl+Space and Ctrl+. come to mind as well.

EDIT: Interestingly, it seems similar to the issue experienced by xterm.js-based terminal emulators on Windows, as noted in the PSReadLine repo: PowerShell/PSReadLine#877 Ctrl+. is interpreted as Ctrl+@ in the Windows Terminal as well, for example. At a guess, because xterm.js on Windows uses WinPTY which does a pretty similar thing to ConPTY's VT processing?

The issue seems to prevent the typing of certain characters on non-US keyboard layouts. For example, I cannot type backspace (alt-gr+?) on my German keyboard. This makes Terminal pretty much unusable for me.

Any known workaround for this?

It's really important. In Far I can't open a windows explorer by pressing shift+enter, or call a context menu by pressing a corresponding key of keyboard.

I think the workaround is to use different hotkeys or different (VT-capable) apps.

The bottom line is that Windows Terminal is a Terminal Emulator, and both it and ConPTY are inherently limited by (really ancient) standards. I'm almost positive that "we" (the community of Windows users?) don't want to simultaneously "embrace and extend" those standards 😉

I still think the best solution is just education about what key combinations can't be encoded ...

Update Fork (#1)

I noticed that latest 1.4.3243.0 seems to still be sending (as observed with showkey -a in an ubuntu wsl2 session):

0x0d for enter
0x0d also for shift+enter
0x0a for ctrl+enter
nothing for ctrl+shift+enter

I worked around it by adding these actions to my settings.json:

{ "command": {"action": "sendInput", "input": "\u001b[13;2u" }, "keys": "shift+enter" },
{ "command": {"action": "sendInput", "input": "\u001b[13;5u" }, "keys": "ctrl+enter" },
{ "command": {"action": "sendInput", "input": "\u001b[13;6u" }, "keys": "ctrl+shift+enter" },

And similarly for shift+space:

{ "command": {"action": "sendInput", "input": "\u001b[32;2u" }, "keys": "shift+space" },
{ "command": {"action": "sendInput", "input": "\u001b[32;5u" }, "keys": "ctrl+space" },
{ "command": {"action": "sendInput", "input": "\u001b[32;6u" }, "keys": "ctrl+shift+space" },

I worked around it by adding these actions to my settings.json:

{ "command": {"action": "sendInput", "input": "\u001b[13;2u" }, "keys": "shift+enter" },
{ "command": {"action": "sendInput", "input": "\u001b[13;5u" }, "keys": "ctrl+enter" },
{ "command": {"action": "sendInput", "input": "\u001b[13;6u" }, "keys": "ctrl+shift+enter" },

This is gold.
with https://www.asciitable.com/ , you can set any combination on shortcuts.
My emacs is flying in the terminal now.
Huge thanks!

Same problem still happening in 2023 in Version: 1.12.10983.0.

{ "command": {"action": "sendInput", "input": "\u001b[13;2u" }, "keys": "shift+enter" },
{ "command": {"action": "sendInput", "input": "\u001b[13;5u" }, "keys": "ctrl+enter" },
{ "command": {"action": "sendInput", "input": "\u001b[13;6u" }, "keys": "ctrl+shift+enter" },

This worked for me.

I noticed that latest 1.4.3243.0 seems to still be sending (as observed with showkey -a in an ubuntu wsl2 session):

* `0x0d` for `enter`

* `0x0d` also for `shift+enter`

* `0x0a` for `ctrl+enter`

* nothing for `ctrl+shift+enter`

I worked around it by adding these actions to my settings.json:

{ "command": {"action": "sendInput", "input": "\u001b[13;2u" }, "keys": "shift+enter" },
{ "command": {"action": "sendInput", "input": "\u001b[13;5u" }, "keys": "ctrl+enter" },
{ "command": {"action": "sendInput", "input": "\u001b[13;6u" }, "keys": "ctrl+shift+enter" },

And similarly for shift+space:

{ "command": {"action": "sendInput", "input": "\u001b[32;2u" }, "keys": "shift+space" },
{ "command": {"action": "sendInput", "input": "\u001b[32;5u" }, "keys": "ctrl+space" },
{ "command": {"action": "sendInput", "input": "\u001b[32;6u" }, "keys": "ctrl+shift+space" },

I did this but then I started getting ;2u instead of space when lingering on the shift key while pressing space. Excluding shift + space did the trick.

; Sends Ctrl+Shift+Enter when Claude Code is active, otherwise normal Shift+Enter

#Persistent
#SingleInstance force

; Shift+Enter hotkey
+Enter::
    WinGet, activeProcess, ProcessName, A
    WinGetTitle, activeTitle, A

    ; Check if Windows Terminal with Claude Code (title starts with U+2733)
    if (activeProcess = "WindowsTerminal.exe" && SubStr(activeTitle, 1, 1) = Chr(0x2733))
    {
        ; Claude Code is active - send Ctrl+Shift+Enter
        Send ^+{Enter}
    }
    else
    {
        ; Not Claude Code - pass through normal Shift+Enter
        Send +{Enter}
    }
return

I use this AHK script to send ctrl+shift+enter when I send shift+enter if the active window is WindowsTerminal.exe and has the claude code unicode character in it - U+2733

fix(input): Windows 启用 win32-input-mode（DECSET 9001）修复 Shift+Enter 无法…

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Shift+Enter always submits, breaking PSReadline features [Windows.Terminal] #530

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Shift+Enter always submits, breaking PSReadline features [Windows.Terminal] #530

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