# New topic title input (#reply-title) remains LTR in RTL sites — fix still not effective (2026)

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-topic-title-input-reply-title-remains-ltr-in-rtl-sites-fix-still-not-effective-2026/400490
**Category:** Bug
**Tags:** composer, rtl
**Created:** [April 12, 2026, 12:09pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-topic-title-input-reply-title-remains-ltr-in-rtl-sites-fix-still-not-effective-2026/400490 "2026-04-12T12:09:54Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 2

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### Author: ![sam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/sam/32/102149_2.png) [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2026, 1:23am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-topic-title-input-reply-title-remains-ltr-in-rtl-sites-fix-still-not-effective-2026/400490/2 "2026-04-13T01:23:53Z")

</div>

Yeah this is a tricky one, it is not solveable with CSS, we need a markup change.

Specifically placing a `direction auto` when a field is empty give your LTR

> **[3.2.6.4 The dir attribute - HTML Standard](https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/dom.html#the-dir-attribute)**
>
> Living Standard — Last Updated 28 May 2026

 ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/d/7/3/d73fe4f41e7e7b408199058c5dc9e9247769d8af.png)

So if the input is blank you get ltr.

The fix I made here is to default to “rtl” in this case and swap to auto as soon as a letter is filled up.

@Osama do you mind reviewing/merging?

[https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/39213](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/39213)

@david I had to leak a test helper into our code base to test this cleanly, but I assume this is the kind of stuff we will tree shake out eventually.

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