No keyboard navigation possible

[Randomitsuki]

Hi there,

since the recent update I can no longer navigate playlists with the keyboard keys Up, Down, Page Up, or Page Down. It is quite a nuisance to use the touchpad and the scroll bar for large playlist.

Another issue: rearranging a playlist by dragging a song to the upper part of the screen works fine. But when you want to drag a song to a later position on the list, dragging to the lower end of the screen has little or no effect as no scrolling of songs occurs.

Plan

Premium

Country

Germany

Device

Lenovo Thinkpad

Operating System

Windows 10

[Randomitsuki]

Addendum: I just found out that keyboard navigation in a playlist works (e.g. scrolling down a list) until I use the touchpad once (e.g., playing a song). After that, keyboard input is no longer possible.

[Randomitsuki · Accepted solution]

Ok, I am now officially an **bleep**…

I used to navigate with the keys when the cursor was to the left of the title list. This won‘t do anymore (as reported above). Now I realized that for each song one can click on the large space between the song title and the running time. Once you have done that, navigating with the Up or Down keys is possible. Sorry for the disturbance…

[wvutsr]

This is a workaround, not a solution. Since you can't select an item on any screen, keyboard navigation should be as if you move the scrollbar the appropriate amount.

[MafeG]

Hi folks,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community. 

@wvutsr Could you please give us more details about what you're trying to achieve? 

We tested from our side and after opening a playlist and clicking on a song's name, we were able to use the keyboard arrows to navigate up and down.

If what you try to do is different, please let us know so we can assist you.

Keep us posted.

[wvutsr]

For instance, I usually want to scroll down to the album section of an
artist page. That isn't possible with the keyboard

Also, If I do as you suggest, I can only page down three times
before keyboard navigation stops working. This seems crazy to me.

[Yordan]

Hi @wvutsr.

Thanks for your clarification!

Could you try the following:

1. Go to a playlist / an artist's page and press the Tab key on your keyboard.
2. The big green play button should now be selected and now you should be able to scroll through the page with the arrow keys / Page Up and Page Down.

You should be able to use Page Up and Page Down until you reach either the top or the bottom of the page. You can also use the Tab key to navigate through the page and keep track of your current position.

Let us know how it goes.

Cheers!

[wvutsr]

See my previous response about vertical navigation not working after you
move down 3 pages

[Eni]

Hi there @wvutsr,

Thanks for your reply.

Would you mind sending over a video where we can take a better look at this behavior? You can attach it using the Insert Video options in the post editor.

Also, could you let us know the exact make/model, operating system and Spotify version of your device?

We'll be on the lookout.

[wvutsr]

Acer Swift SF314-59
Windows 11 Home 21H2
Spotify for Windows 1.1.77.645.gd783ecf7

I assume you'd like a video of only being able to page down 3 times. I hope
the information above is enough

It certainly feels like little to no usability testing was done (see also
the "Add to Queue" behavior)

Certainly there's been no attempt to make the app accessible

[Alex]

Hey @wvutsr,

Thanks for the reply.

It would be great if you can submit a screen recording of the issue in question, as we can't replicate the same behavior currently.

If the recording is too big to add as attachment, you can send us a link to an external video sharing platform.

Looking forward to your reply.

[Randomitsuki]

Hi, here's the OP again.

Essentially, I still have the same problem that wvutsr reported, so I am confident that you could replicate this without a video. First of all, it is true that once you have a playlist and hit Tab, you can use the navigation keys properly (as indicated by a white frame around the playlist). Didn't know that before, so thanks.

However, when you use the touchpad to select one of the titles of the playlist, and subsequently use the Page Down or Up key for scrolling, this works exactly three times - after that, keyboard navigation is frozen, and no navigation key has any effect.

[Eni]

Hi there @Randomitsuki, 

Thanks for getting back to us. 

We can confirm that we've tried this on several desktop computers, but couldn't replicate the issue. 

Could you let us know if this is happening with all playlists/sections of the app?

On another note, we'd like to know if the issue occurs only on a specific playlist and how large that playlist is. Also, does it happen with a playlist with only 30 songs?

Lastly, since we couldn't replicate this, a video of the issue happening would give us a better context of what you're experiencing on your end.

We'll be on the lookout.

[Randomitsuki]

Hi there,

as much as I can tell this happens with all playlists consistenly (no matter the length).  I just tried it with an artist page, but the keyboard freezing sometimes occurs, and sometimes not (in any case, not consistently after hitting the Page Down key three times).

I have made a 40s video of it. Hope that it works:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LW-j5fFZe4

Best,

Randomitsuki

[Eni]

Hey @Randomitsuki, 

Thanks for sending us this info. 

Could you try pressing Tab instead of clicking on the first song? This should let you select the first song. Once it's selected, you should be able to scroll down using the Arrow down.  

Let us know how it goes.

[Randomitsuki]

Hi @Eni,

thanks for your reply. I already read about the "Tab" option a few days ago earlier in this thread. And as I wrote, it indeed works. However, whenever I subsequently use the touchpad to select or start a piece of music, the navigation key freeze reappears.

As a hardcore Excel user it is difficult to give up habits (using touchpad/mouse for addressing information on a displayed page, using the navigation keys for scrolling). Because of the persistence of this bug (on my machine, at least) I changed to scrolling with the touchpad only, but it's quite tricky for longer playlists.

[Eni]

Hi there @Randomitsuki, 

Thanks for your reply. 

Could you let us know if the same happens using a different PC?

Keep us in the loop.

[Randomitsuki]

Hi there @Eni,

I don't have access to another PC. But as the navigation key freeze happens on my PC for basically every part of the app, and it never happened on all the PCs that you tested, I guess that it would work on another machine. Nonetheless, there are at the very least two users (wvutsr and me) for whom keyboard navigation is not usable for almost half a year now, leading to enough frustration to post on this board.

[Jeremy]

Hi there @Randomitsuki,

Thank you for your reply and confirmation.

We've tried this from our end and we're able to replicate the same behavior. We've passed this along to the right team. We'll update you as soon as we have any updates regarding this.

Take care!