# New composer inserts double line breaks when pressing return key
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-composer-inserts-double-line-breaks-when-pressing-return-key/373229
**Category:** Feature
**Tags:** composer
**Created:** [July 7, 2025, 6:20pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-composer-inserts-double-line-breaks-when-pressing-return-key/373229 "2025-07-07T18:20:01Z")
**Posts on this page:** 15
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@dfabulich](https://meta.discourse.org/u/dfabulich)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2025, 6:20pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-composer-inserts-double-line-breaks-when-pressing-return-key/373229/1 "2025-07-07T18:20:01Z")
In the new composer, type something and press return.
Actual: The new composer inserts a double-line paragraph break.
Expected: When I press return once, it should insert a single-line break, converting it to a paragraph break when I use two lines.
I sense that maybe the Discourse developers actually like it this way, but it’s really bad. No rich-text editor I’ve ever used does it Discourse’s way.
At a minimum, there should be a way to turn this paragraph behavior off.
---
### Author:  [@phoenix1](https://meta.discourse.org/u/phoenix1)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2025, 6:39pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-composer-inserts-double-line-breaks-when-pressing-return-key/373229/2 "2025-07-07T18:39:31Z")
I would have to agree with this, the behaviour of the new composer is strange and unintuitive when it comes to a simple thing like pressing return. Between this and a bunch of other immediate bugs that I’m trying to reproduce, I would have to say that this is a feature which doesn’t quite feel ready for prime-time yet. ☹ If the new composer were the default at the moment for example, posting on my site would be **completely** broken, as many times I’ll post images that I have hosted at Flickr.
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### Author:  [@lindsey](https://meta.discourse.org/u/lindsey)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2025, 8:25pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-composer-inserts-double-line-breaks-when-pressing-return-key/373229/4 "2025-07-07T20:25:11Z")
I’m moving this to #Contribute > Feature since this is working as designed, though I understand this is not a design choice that you find desirable. We’re talking about this internally and will share more soon.
> [@phoenix1](#):
>
> a bunch of other immediate bugs that I’m trying to reproduce
Please open new topics as you are able to reproduce bugs (and I would appreciate more information about what’s broken with the Flickr links); let’s keep this topic focused on the original poster’s comments.
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### Author:  [@phoenix1](https://meta.discourse.org/u/phoenix1)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2025, 8:28pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-composer-inserts-double-line-breaks-when-pressing-return-key/373229/5 "2025-07-07T20:28:08Z")
Very sorry, I will keep the discussion on-topic in the future!
I did post a bug regarding the issue with inline image links in the appropriate forum, hopefully that was the right place for it!
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### Author:  [@phoenix1](https://meta.discourse.org/u/phoenix1)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2025, 8:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-composer-inserts-double-line-breaks-when-pressing-return-key/373229/6 "2025-07-07T20:29:18Z")
Sorry, in my last post I forgot to actually link to the bug that I had posted:
> [@New Composer Issue: Linked Images](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-composer-issue-linked-images/373228):
>
> Hello! Well, I tried enabling the rich text composer on my site, unfortunately I have experienced a few issues with it… The first and foremost is that linking to images, as you would in the regular Markdown editor, doesn’t appear to work in the rich text composer. For example: ) In the regular Markdown editor, that would of course result in an inline image being displayed in the post. As you can perhaps see here, t…
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [July 8, 2025, 4:30am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-composer-inserts-double-line-breaks-when-pressing-return-key/373229/7 "2025-07-08T04:30:03Z")
Keep in mind
SHIFTENTER
will work
I am not 100% convinced we should change our default, but agree there is a bit of lack of parity with the raw composer.
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### Author:  [@supermathie](https://meta.discourse.org/u/supermathie)
#### Post date: [July 8, 2025, 6:46am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-composer-inserts-double-line-breaks-when-pressing-return-key/373229/8 "2025-07-08T06:46:04Z")
Do “normal people” know about that chord?
> **[Average Familiarity](https://xkcd.com/2501/)**
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### Author:  [@Moin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Moin)
#### Post date: [July 8, 2025, 6:52am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-composer-inserts-double-line-breaks-when-pressing-return-key/373229/9 "2025-07-08T06:52:00Z")
Even if you know, it will still be difficult on touch devices without an external keyboard.
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [July 8, 2025, 7:03am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-composer-inserts-double-line-breaks-when-pressing-return-key/373229/10 "2025-07-08T07:03:44Z")
Understood.
But
should we encourage people to
type like this
Or
is it an outlier way of typing content, and generally we want to encourage tidy paragraphs?
Markdown original spec is so [adamant](https://szymonkrajewski.pl/line-break-in-markdown/) this is a bad pattern it makes you insert a `\` at the end of the line or double space to line break.
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### Author:  [@awesomerobot](https://meta.discourse.org/u/awesomerobot)
#### Post date: [July 8, 2025, 1:55pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-composer-inserts-double-line-breaks-when-pressing-return-key/373229/11 "2025-07-08T13:55:35Z")
> [@dfabulich](#):
>
> No rich-text editor I’ve ever used does it Discourse’s way.
It’s less common but we’re not completely alone in this, [notion.so](https://notion.co) and [medium.com](http://medium.com) work this way as well — generally the idea is to encourage more structure.
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### Author:  [@Shauny](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Shauny)
#### Post date: [July 9, 2025, 4:41pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-composer-inserts-double-line-breaks-when-pressing-return-key/373229/12 "2025-07-09T16:41:40Z")
I’m also finding it very difficult to switch from previously pressing enter twice to do a new paragraph to now having to only press it once.
There doesn’t seem to be a way to do a single line break on mobile.
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### Author:  [@supermathie](https://meta.discourse.org/u/supermathie)
#### Post date: [July 9, 2025, 6:24pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-composer-inserts-double-line-breaks-when-pressing-return-key/373229/15 "2025-07-09T18:24:16Z")
> [@Shauny](#):
>
> There doesn’t seem to be a way to do a single line break on mobile.
FWIW, Shift+Enter using an actual keyboard also doesn’t work with mobile 😮
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [July 9, 2025, 9:30pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-composer-inserts-double-line-breaks-when-pressing-return-key/373229/16 "2025-07-09T21:30:24Z")
I guess we could add an “insert line break” item on mobile behind the plus, it would provide an affordance
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### Author:  [@\_diondiondion](https://meta.discourse.org/u/_diondiondion)
#### Post date: [July 14, 2025, 9:46am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-composer-inserts-double-line-breaks-when-pressing-return-key/373229/17 "2025-07-14T09:46:59Z")
FWIW, while it doesn’t bother me personally, this behaviour has also caused confusion among quite a lot of people in my community who were not familiar with the Shift + Enter shortcut (or didn’t expect to be able to use it).
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### Author:  [@mentalstring](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mentalstring)
#### Post date: [December 13, 2025, 10:52am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-composer-inserts-double-line-breaks-when-pressing-return-key/373229/18 "2025-12-13T10:52:19Z")
For anyone, like me, who landed here trying to understand how to do the Shift + Enter equivalent on touch screens, there’s a trick [here](https://meta.discourse.org/t/edit-box-too-wysiwyg/379654/3):
> [@Edit box too wysIwyg](https://meta.discourse.org/t/edit-box-too-wysiwyg/379654/3):
>
> In addition to being able to freely toggle it back and forth or with the global site setting like Nate showed to use the original and unchanged Markdown mode, you can also add a hard break in the rich editor with a shift enter or by leaving two empty spaces at the end of each line before hitting enter (useful for mobile where you can’t shift enter).