feat(mobile): open the session list when back is pressed - #1129
feat(mobile): open the session list when back is pressed#1129materemias wants to merge 8 commits into
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Included review availability: Your plan includes up to 10 reviews per rolling hour; 9 remain after this review. 📝 WalkthroughWalkthroughThe PR adds a disabled-by-default mobile back-navigation preference. When enabled on mobile screens, browser back navigation opens or closes the session-list sidebar through history sentinel handling. Appearance Settings provides localized controls. ChangesMobile back navigation
Sequence Diagram(s)sequenceDiagram
participant Browser
participant AppContentInner
participant useBackButtonSidebar
participant SessionListSidebar
Browser->>AppContentInner: Trigger back navigation
AppContentInner->>useBackButtonSidebar: Provide location and sidebar state
useBackButtonSidebar->>SessionListSidebar: Open or close sidebar
useBackButtonSidebar->>Browser: Re-arm sentinel or allow navigation
Poem
Merge Risk: ⚪ Minimal · up to This adds an opt-in mobile-only back-button behavior while preserving existing defaults and desktop behavior; no actionable merge-blocking risk remains beyond normal checks and review. 🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5✅ Passed checks (5 passed)
✨ Finishing Touches🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)
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Pull request overview
Adds an opt-in mobile-only behavior where the device back gesture opens/closes the session list (sidebar) to make session switching easier on phones, controlled by a new Appearance setting.
Changes:
- Introduces a new
useBackButtonSidebarhook that manages a history “sentinel” entry to translate back presses into sidebar open/close. - Wires the hook into
AppContentbehindisMobile && preferences.backOpensSessionList. - Adds a new UI preference key plus Appearance UI + i18n strings across all locales.
Reviewed changes
Copilot reviewed 15 out of 15 changed files in this pull request and generated 1 comment.
Show a summary per file
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| src/hooks/useBackButtonSidebar.ts | New hook implementing the back-gesture-to-sidebar behavior via a history sentinel. |
| src/components/app/AppContent.tsx | Integrates the hook and gates it on mobile + the new preference. |
| src/hooks/useUiPreferences.ts | Adds backOpensSessionList preference key with default false. |
| src/components/settings/view/tabs/AppearanceSettingsTab.tsx | Adds an Appearance toggle for “Back Opens Session List”. |
| src/i18n/locales/en/settings.json | Adds the new “Mobile Navigation” section strings. |
| src/i18n/locales/de/settings.json | Adds the new “Mobile Navigation” section strings. |
| src/i18n/locales/es/settings.json | Adds the new “Mobile Navigation” section strings. |
| src/i18n/locales/fr/settings.json | Adds the new “Mobile Navigation” section strings. |
| src/i18n/locales/it/settings.json | Adds the new “Mobile Navigation” section strings. |
| src/i18n/locales/ja/settings.json | Adds the new “Mobile Navigation” section strings. |
| src/i18n/locales/ko/settings.json | Adds the new “Mobile Navigation” section strings. |
| src/i18n/locales/ru/settings.json | Adds the new “Mobile Navigation” section strings. |
| src/i18n/locales/tr/settings.json | Adds the new “Mobile Navigation” section strings. |
| src/i18n/locales/zh-CN/settings.json | Adds the new “Mobile Navigation” section strings. |
| src/i18n/locales/zh-TW/settings.json | Adds the new “Mobile Navigation” section strings. |
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| try { | ||
| window.history.pushState( | ||
| { ...(window.history.state as object | null), [GUARD_STATE_KEY]: true }, | ||
| '', | ||
| ); |
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Actionable comments posted: 2
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Verify each finding against current code. Fix only still-valid issues, skip the
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Inline comments:
In `@src/hooks/useBackButtonSidebar.ts`:
- Around line 43-47: Update the back-button guard in useBackButtonSidebar so
replace navigations target the caller’s intended history entry rather than the
sentinel. Remove or rebase the sentinel before navigate(..., { replace: true }),
then arm a fresh sentinel after the replacement completes, preserving normal
navigation behavior when the guard is inactive.
- Around line 131-191: Update skipBack and the related arming effect to clear
skippingRef.current when history.back() cannot traverse because the page is at
the first history entry and no popstate occurs. Ensure this reset also applies
when disabling the setting or crossing the mobile breakpoint at that entry,
allowing the effect to push a new sentinel and later back presses to reopen the
sidebar.
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Fix all unresolved CodeRabbit comments on this PR:
- Push a commit to this branch (recommended)
- Create a new PR with the fixes
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📒 Files selected for processing (15)
src/components/app/AppContent.tsxsrc/components/settings/view/tabs/AppearanceSettingsTab.tsxsrc/hooks/useBackButtonSidebar.tssrc/hooks/useUiPreferences.tssrc/i18n/locales/de/settings.jsonsrc/i18n/locales/en/settings.jsonsrc/i18n/locales/es/settings.jsonsrc/i18n/locales/fr/settings.jsonsrc/i18n/locales/it/settings.jsonsrc/i18n/locales/ja/settings.jsonsrc/i18n/locales/ko/settings.jsonsrc/i18n/locales/ru/settings.jsonsrc/i18n/locales/tr/settings.jsonsrc/i18n/locales/zh-CN/settings.jsonsrc/i18n/locales/zh-TW/settings.json
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Thanks — went through all three review points. One was a real bug and is fixed in bfe9775; the other two are addressed below. Fixed: skip state stranded when Correct, and reachable: turn the setting off (or rotate past the 768px breakpoint) while a sentinel is live and on the first history entry, and the internal There is a second half to it that the review did not mention and that I hit while testing the fix: the watchdog must not be torn down with the Verified in a 390x844 Chromium: with the skip made non-traversable, the hook re-arms within the watchdog window and the next back press opens the list again (it stayed dead before the fix). Core cycle re-checked afterwards — back opens, back closes, back navigates out, and the session-jump loop re-arms with no dead press. Not a bug: Object spread of The Known limitation, documented rather than fixed: Accurate, and already called out in the hook doc block. The one The suggested fix — disarm before every replace and re-arm after — means coupling the hook to every current and future |
On a phone the only way to switch sessions is to reach for the menu button, which is awkward one-handed. This adds an opt-in Appearance setting, "Back Opens Session List", that turns the device back gesture into "show the session list" instead. The browser cannot observe a back press without consuming a history entry, so the hook keeps a sentinel entry on top of the stack: the first back press pops the sentinel, which changes no URL, and that pop is translated into opening the sidebar before re-arming. Back while the list is open closes it and deliberately does not re-arm, so a genuine back press is always one tap away and the app can still be left. Whether the sentinel is still on top is read off history.state rather than compared by URL, because several navigations here target the URL that is already current. Arming is deferred by a task: react-router handles popstate first and re-renders synchronously, so arming inline would push a sentinel that this hook's own listener then misreads as a user pop. Self-issued history.back() calls are marked so their popstate is not mistaken for a press, and stranded sentinels left below a router push are skipped so they never swallow a press. The setting defaults to off and is gated on the mobile breakpoint, so nothing changes for existing users or on desktop.
history.back() is a silent no-op on the first history entry and dispatches no popstate, which left the in-flight skip flag set and disarmed the back guard for the rest of the session (reachable by turning the setting off, or by crossing the mobile breakpoint, while a sentinel was live). Add a watchdog that clears the skip if no popstate follows, and scope its teardown to unmount so re-subscribing the popstate listener - which happens on exactly those two triggers - cannot cancel it.
bfe9775 to
723eaed
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On a freshly loaded page the sentinel was pushed at mount, before the document had ever been interacted with. Chrome's history manipulation intervention responds to a pushState without user activation by marking every same-document entry skippable, so the back button skipped both the sentinel and the page itself: CanGoBack() is false and Android closes the tab, hiding the app instead of opening the session list. Measured against the app over CDP: Chromium logs a NavigationEntryMarkedSkippable issue for the page on every untouched load, and none once the push waits. So the sentinel now waits for an interaction the browser actually honours. Each candidate event is confirmed with navigator.userActivation.isActive while it is being handled, rather than judged by its name: measured in Chrome 141, Escape, CapsLock and a bare Shift grant nothing, while Tab and a right-button press both do, so a name-based filter would have pushed on some of them and re-created the bug. The latch is cleared on every pop, because the intervention stops honouring an earlier activation after a same-document traversal, and hasBeenActive seeds it once at mount before the first traversal — signing in swaps ProtectedRoute's children without reloading, so the login click belongs to this document but lands before the hook exists to see it. Before the first interaction back is the browser's own gesture again, which is the most the platform allows; from that interaction onwards it opens the list, and the push no longer trips the intervention.
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Actionable comments posted: 1
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Inline comments:
In `@src/hooks/useBackButtonSidebar.ts`:
- Around line 154-159: The back-button state machine in handlePopState and the
activation arming logic must preserve a guarded history entry after closed-list
Back opens the list, so the next Back closes the open list and only the
following Back navigates away without requiring user interaction. Update
activationRef.current and sentinel handling accordingly, and add a mobile test
covering closed list → Back opens → Back closes → Back navigates.
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- Push a commit to this branch (recommended)
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…list Gating the guard push on a user activation left the press that closes the list unable to intercept anything: the pop that opens the list clears the activation, so nothing re-arms, and the next press navigated away from the app instead of closing what the first press had opened. The intervention's own rule is the way out — with one activation a document may add many unskippable entries, until a cross-document navigation or a back/forward occurs. So arming pushes two entries while the activation is live, and the sequence needs no interaction in between: back opens the list, back closes it, back leaves the app. Each guard now carries an id rather than a bare `true`, because a live guard and one a router push buried are otherwise identical in `history.state` and mean opposite things — a press to interpret, versus an entry to skip. The hook tracks the ids it pushed and reads how many are still stacked above the current entry, which is also what lets a partly spent pair be topped up instead of duplicated. What each pop does is still decided when it happens, from the live `sidebarOpen`, not from which half of the pair was consumed: the list can be opened with the menu button between arming and the press, and that case must still close it in one press. `closedByBackRef` is gone with the single-guard design that needed it — a spent pair now ends the sequence on its own, and re-arming already waits for an interaction. Measured in headless Chrome at 390px, reading state over CDP with userGesture disabled so the probe grants no activation of its own. Back presses with no interaction between them: untouched load pushes nothing; one tap pushes the pair; back opens the list; back closes it; back leaves for the previous page. Opening the list with the menu button instead: one back closes it, the next leaves. No NavigationEntryMarkedSkippable issue in either run, confirming two entries on one activation are honoured.
The setting described the three-press sequence but not its precondition, so a reader had no way to know that back leaves the app on a page they have not touched yet — which is not a bug to be fixed but a rule of Chrome's history manipulation intervention: nothing can be pushed for back to pop until the document holds a user activation. That gap is exactly how this feature gets reported as broken. One sentence added per locale, appended to the existing description so the sequence it already promises keeps its wording.
Two paths could issue a `history.back()` the user never asked for. A multi-entry jump — the back button's long-press menu, or history.go() — landed below both guards, which the handler read as "the last guard is spent and nothing moved on screen", and completed it with another back. The user had picked that entry. A back press pops exactly one entry and our guards are never skippable, so more than one disappearing at once is a jump; the handler now leaves the user where they landed. Measured: after history.go(-2) past a live pair, the page stays on the app's own entry, the list does not open, and no extra traversal follows. The disabled path skipped unconditionally, including when the pop had landed on a real entry rather than one of our invisible duplicates. It now skips only while standing on a guard. Measured with the setting switched off mid-session through the preference sync event: the first back skips off both guards and stays on the app with the list closed, and the second leaves for the previous page — the skip clears the tracking, so that press reaches the native traversal instead of being swallowed. Not fixed, for want of a signal: a jump that lands exactly on a guard still reads as a single press and opens the list. Distance is not observable from popstate, and react-router's `idx` is the one thing that could hint at it — while being the value this hook already cannot trust, because pushing behind the router is what makes it drift. Nothing navigates away, so the cost is an unrequested panel a tap dismisses.
Reading only the landing entry conflates two states that need opposite handling: `remaining === 0` is both "the press left my last guard" - a no-op traversal that must be completed - and "a jump landed here from somewhere else", where the user has already moved and completing it would eat an entry they asked to see. With one guard left after the list opened, the disabled path took the second reading and swallowed the press, leaving the user unable to exit. `popstate` reports no distance, so the entry the traversal left is tracked as it is pushed and re-read whenever the router moves the top of the stack. A press the hook may interpret is then exactly one that stepped off one of its own guards onto the entry directly below it.
The arming pass returned before its own bookkeeping when the option was off or no activation was available, so ids of guards a router push had buried stayed on the list, and the hook's idea of the stack disagreed with the stack until the next pop cleaned it up. No user-visible behaviour changes, measured rather than assumed. Every sidebar navigation pushes two entries (the project alias, then the session), so the first pop lands on a router entry and the handler truncates there. The one genuine single-entry push - `notification:navigate` in AppContent - was driven directly with the option on and off: before, the press after it parks the user on the buried guard and the next press exits; after, it consumes the guard and lands on the real entry, and the next press exits. Two presses either way, each moving. What it buys is the invariant, not a repaired press: a guard id is dropped when the entry it names stops being reachable, so no later reader has to be correct about which of three early returns fired first.
Update: five commits since
|
| scenario | result | NavigationEntryMarkedSkippable |
|---|---|---|
| fresh load, no interaction → back | leaves the app (platform's own gesture) | 0 |
| tap → back ×3, no taps in between | list opens → list closes → leaves | 0 |
| menu button opens list → back | closes in one press → next back leaves | 0 |
history.go(-2) past both guards |
stays on the app entry, list untouched | 0 |
| back opens list → option switched off → back | leaves the app | 0 |
| session opened → back ×5 | open → close → / idx 1 → / idx 0 → leaves |
0 |
| session A → option off → session B → back ×3 | idx 4 → 3 → 2 → 1, buried guards consumed in one press | 0 |
notification:navigate push (with the option on and off) |
consumes the guard, lands on the real entry, next press exits | 0 |
react-router's idx is what proves nothing is swallowed: two app entries can share the URL / (the alias in useProjectsState), so only the index shows that a press moved.
Known limitation, stated plainly
Two remain, both inherent to the sentinel approach: pushState drops forward history, so the forward gesture stops working while the option is on; and because a guard is always the top entry, navigate(..., { replace: true }) replaces a guard rather than the entry the caller meant to drop. The feature is off by default.
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Tip For best results, initiate chat on the files or code changes. 🧩 Analysis chain🏁 Script executed: #!/bin/bash
set -euo pipefail
printf '%s\n' '=== PR changed files ==='
git diff --name-only bdb64126..HEAD
printf '%s\n' '=== Hook outline ==='
ast-grep outline src/hooks/useBackButtonSidebar.ts --items all --view expanded
printf '%s\n' '=== Hook source (numbered) ==='
cat -n src/hooks/useBackButtonSidebar.ts
printf '%s\n' '=== App integration outline/source ==='
ast-grep outline src/components/app/AppContent.tsx --items all --view expanded
rg -n -C 8 'useBackButtonSidebar|useLocation|backOpensSessionList' src/components/app/AppContent.tsx
printf '%s\n' '=== Exact diff from stated base ==='
git diff --find-renames --find-copies --unified=30 bdb64126..HEAD -- \
src/hooks/useBackButtonSidebar.ts \
src/components/app/AppContent.tsx \
src/hooks/useUiPreferences.ts \
src/components/settings/view/tabs/AppearanceSettingsTab.tsx
printf '%s\n' '=== Replace navigation call sites ==='
rg -n -P -C 5 '\bnavigate\s*\([^;]*\breplace\s*:\s*true' srcLength of output: 50254
The sequence now works as required:
The disabled-state path only skips after it confirms an adjacent guard traversal. The mount-scoped watchdog also clears a stranded The documented The prior functional correctness finding is addressed. 🐇 ✅ If you found this review helpful, would you consider giving us a shout-out on X? Thank you for using CodeRabbit! You are interacting with an AI system. |
What & why
On a phone, switching sessions means reaching for the menu button in the top-left — awkward one-handed, and the most common thing I do on mobile. This adds an opt-in Appearance setting, Back Opens Session List, that turns the device back gesture into "show the session list" instead.
With it on, jumping between sessions is: back → tap session → back → tap session.
The setting defaults to off and is additionally gated on the mobile breakpoint (768px), so nothing changes for existing users or on desktop.
Behaviour
The "back closes the list" step deliberately does not re-arm, so a genuine back press is never more than one tap away.
How it works
The browser gives no way to observe a back press without consuming a history entry, so the hook keeps a sentinel entry on top of the stack. The first back press pops the sentinel — which changes no URL — and that pop is translated into opening the sidebar, then re-armed.
Three details are load-bearing and were each found by testing on a device rather than by reasoning:
history.state, not compared by URL. Several navigations here target the URL that is already current (navigate('/')on project select, new session and delete), and react-router never copies the marker onto its own entries, so the marker's absence is an exact "re-arm" signal where a URL comparison silently fails.popstatelistener runs first and re-renders synchronously, which flushes this hook's effect inside the same dispatch. Arming inline pushed a fresh sentinel that the hook's own listener then misread as a user pop, opening the list on what was a genuine back navigation.history.back()calls the hook issues itself are marked, since theirpopstateis otherwise indistinguishable from a user press; and sentinels stranded below a later router push are skipped, so they never swallow a press.Two limitations are inherent to the sentinel approach and are documented in the hook:
pushStatedrops forward history, and because the sentinel is the top entry,navigate(..., { replace: true })replaces the sentinel rather than the entry the caller meant to drop.Scope
src/hooks/useBackButtonSidebar.ts— new hooksrc/components/app/AppContent.tsx— wiring, gated onisMobile && preferencesrc/hooks/useUiPreferences.ts— new preference key, defaultfalsesrc/components/settings/view/tabs/AppearanceSettingsTab.tsx— the togglesrc/i18n/locales/*/settings.json— strings for all 11 localesVerification
npm run buildpasses. Typecheck and eslint clean.Smoke-tested in a 390×844 Chromium against a throwaway database, walking the full press sequence in a session: back opens the list with the URL preserved → back closes it → back navigates out of the session with the list closed → the loop still works after jumping between sessions. Also checked that switching the setting off while a sentinel is live performs a real navigation rather than eating a press, and that history grows a bounded ~2 entries per navigation.
Happy to change the approach or the naming — if the sentinel trick is not something you want in the codebase, say so and I will close this.
Summary by CodeRabbit
New Features
Bug Fixes