# Post Hotkeys do not work when no post selected
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/post-hotkeys-do-not-work-when-no-post-selected/16207
**Category:** Feature
**Created:** [June 3, 2014, 5:37pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/post-hotkeys-do-not-work-when-no-post-selected/16207 "2014-06-03T17:37:58Z")
**Posts on this page:** 11
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@lightyear](https://meta.discourse.org/u/lightyear)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2014, 5:37pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/post-hotkeys-do-not-work-when-no-post-selected/16207/1 "2014-06-03T17:37:58Z")
Heyah,
is it just me or are the post-specific hotkeys broken? Whatever I do (even marking stuff in a post), when pressing `s`, `r`, `l`, `q` or any other _post_-specific hotkey, nothing happens. Neither here, nor on [try.discourse.org](http://try.discourse.org), not in Firefox (Nightly) nor Chrome (stable) on Mac. No messages in the developer console either. _topic_-based Hotkeys (like `shift r`) work though.
Or am I just missing a special trick to make it clear which post I mean?
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### Author:  [@zogstrip](https://meta.discourse.org/u/zogstrip)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2014, 5:46pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/post-hotkeys-do-not-work-when-no-post-selected/16207/2 "2014-06-03T17:46:12Z")
Just tried it here on this very post and it works just fine (using latest Chrome on Linux).
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### Author:  [@riking](https://meta.discourse.org/u/riking)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2014, 7:14pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/post-hotkeys-do-not-work-when-no-post-selected/16207/3 "2014-06-03T19:14:09Z")
Pressing k l liked your post over here.
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### Author:  [@cpradio](https://meta.discourse.org/u/cpradio)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2014, 7:27pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/post-hotkeys-do-not-work-when-no-post-selected/16207/4 "2014-06-03T19:27:41Z")
Weird, it wasn’t working for me earlier today (which is why I liked his response)… But now it definitely is. It definitely isn’t working on our Discourse site… (granted we aren’t up to date with master though).
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2014, 11:30pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/post-hotkeys-do-not-work-when-no-post-selected/16207/5 "2014-06-03T23:30:36Z")
I really don’t know what to do here, we could
1. pop up a window saying “please select a post” if you have no post selected
2. just automatically select the post you hovering on, also a bit weird
3. do nothing
not sure which one of the three, but regardless this is a feature request, not a bug
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### Author:  [@mcwumbly](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mcwumbly)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2014, 1:47am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/post-hotkeys-do-not-work-when-no-post-selected/16207/6 "2014-06-04T01:47:02Z")
Yeah, works fine if you select a post first with J or K.
I think something like this would be best, though it could get tricky:
> [@sam](#):
>
> just automatically select the post you hovering on, also a bit weird
In Gmail, there is always an email (eg post) selected. It doesn’t automatically select the one that is in view, but that would be better on this platform, I think.
In Trello, you can hover over cards and click. It works pretty well, but I wonder about the value of having keyboard shortcuts that require using the mouse to hover.
In lieu of that, #1 would at least be an improvement, I think:
> [@sam](#):
>
> pop up a window saying “please select a post” if you have no post selected
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### Author:  [@lightyear](https://meta.discourse.org/u/lightyear)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2014, 8:01am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/post-hotkeys-do-not-work-when-no-post-selected/16207/7 "2014-06-04T08:01:33Z")
Ahahaha, now I know. _once you selected_ a post via `k` or `j` it does work. It just isn’t clear at all that this needs to happen first in the help (as the description for `k` and `j` don’t even mention posts). So, yes, the bug is a mis-communication to the user.
@sam, I’d suggest moving it to UI/UX then.
* * *
My proposal would be to either mention _post_ on selection or say “like selected post” that it is clear it needs to be selected first.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [September 6, 2018, 12:39am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/post-hotkeys-do-not-work-when-no-post-selected/16207/8 "2018-09-06T00:39:51Z")
> [@sam](#):
>
> pop up a window saying “please select a post” if you have no post selected
We should at least do this @sam
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [September 6, 2018, 12:43am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/post-hotkeys-do-not-work-when-no-post-selected/16207/9 "2018-09-06T00:43:04Z")
This ties into the “transient notification” widget we always wanted. (eg for cases where a new post pops up in a conversation and other stuff like that) I am not strongly against this for this use case but I would like the transient notification patter / widget done first.
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [September 6, 2018, 12:56am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/post-hotkeys-do-not-work-when-no-post-selected/16207/10 "2018-09-06T00:56:40Z")
OK also closing this one in favor of:
> [@Instructions on right and feedback on "wrong" keyboard shortcut usage](https://meta.discourse.org/t/instructions-on-right-and-feedback-on-wrong-keyboard-shortcut-usage/65794/16):
>
> Yes I brought this up here: [https://meta.discourse.org/t/some-kind-of-notification-when-keyboard-shortcuts-do-something-off-screen/19423/2?u=sam](https://meta.discourse.org/t/some-kind-of-notification-when-keyboard-shortcuts-do-something-off-screen/19423/2) We need a new widget first imo, cause this is a soft, “oh no I need to close a modal now” kind of notification.
We had 3 topics about this 😵
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [September 6, 2018, 12:56am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/post-hotkeys-do-not-work-when-no-post-selected/16207/11 "2018-09-06T00:56:51Z")