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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
Posted by Maurice Parker
Feb 2, 2026 at 09:24 PM
Zavala 4.0 is now in Beta testing. Zavala 4.0 has been updated to support Liquid Glass and requires the latest OS’s from Apple to work. It also has the new Setting so that the Editor can create sibling rows instead of child rows when return is used on a row with child rows. Internally, there were some big changes to make syncing more robust. Unfortunately that required updating the internal database and the iCloud database schemas. That means that once you upgrade to Zavala 4.0, you can’t go back to a prior version and if you are using iCloud syncing, all your devices have to be upgraded to Zavala 4.0 to sync using the new database structure.
Any help testing Zavala 4.0 is greatly appreciated. Here is more on how you can help test.
https://github.com/vincode-io/Zavala/discussions/300
Posted by Dave M
Feb 3, 2026 at 01:53 PM
It looks very nice, but I’m very wary of software where I can’t see where my files are, or *touch* them.
The OPML import is neat, but I’d love to see a first-class citizen of OPML, where it doesn’t get imported and exported, but can just be opened and saved as a normal file.
But the ‘magic storage’ of the files is a killer for me: MindNode has gone this way in Next, and it means I can’t use it reliably as the file doesn’t exist on my machine and can’t be copied, rendered by other application - it can only be queried through scriping in other tools, which turns it into a dead-end silo.
/justmythoughtsonopening