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Zavala - An open source outliner for Macs, iPads, and iPhones
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Posted by Maurice Parker
Jan 7, 2026 at 07:56 PM
Satis, I am confused. Please help me understand better.
After reading your post several times, here is my understanding of what you are describing. A child row is always created when hitting Return after typing some text. You expect a sibling row to be created, but a child row is created instead.
In Zavala (and Bike AFAIK) the only time a child row is automatically created is when you are at the end of a row and that row already has child rows. In that case it will insert a new child row above the other child rows.
I’m having trouble reconciling what I think you are saying verses how Zavala actually works.
Posted by satis
Jan 7, 2026 at 09:31 PM
Maurice Parker wrote:
Satis, I am confused. Please help me understand better.
>
>After reading your post several times, here is my understanding of what
>you are describing. A child row is always created when hitting Return
>after typing some text. You expect a sibling row to be created, but a
>child row is created instead.
>
>In Zavala (and Bike AFAIK) the only time a child row is automatically
>created is when you are at the end of a row and that row already has
>child rows. In that case it will insert a new child row above the other
>child rows.
>
>I’m having trouble reconciling what I think you are saying verses how
>Zavala actually works.
In Zavala, when I’m editing a row that already has child rows, pressing Return doesn’t create a new sibling row (which is what I’ve come to expect). Instead, it creates a new child row. That means I then have to press Control–Command–Left Arrow to outdent it, something I was having to do fairly often. As far as I can recall, there isn’t a direct keyboard command in Zavala to simply create a new sibling row in this situation.
I often return to existing rows to edit them, and when those rows have children, I almost never want Return to create a new child item. Much more often, I want to continue adding items at the same outline level I was already working in. This expectation is common in many non-outline apps. For example, in Reminders or Todoist, when I edit a task and press Return, I expect a new task to be created—not to be dropped into the task’s notes section (entering notes requires a different command). Likewise, in Excel and Google Sheets, pressing Return (or Enter) finishes editing a cell and moves to the next one, rather than inserting a line break inside the cell (as Apple Numbers does, sometimes to the surprise or frustration of users accustomed to the more common behavior).
I should have been clearer that Zavala does not continue to indent with additional Returns; I was describing in general the consequence of always adding new children with a Return, which I’ve seen in other apps.
Posted by Maurice Parker
Jan 7, 2026 at 10:05 PM
Thanks for the clarification, Satis. I’ll definitely do my best to get this in the 4.0 release. I hate making promises about upcoming features, but I really can’t see how I can’t make this happen for 4.0.
The issue that I created to track this is here: https://github.com/vincode-io/Zavala/issues/298