terminal: Add ctrl+click link detection with mouse movement by nihalxkumar · Pull Request #42526 · zed-industries/zed

nihalxkumar · 2025-11-12T12:40:28Z

Closes #41994

This PR introduces Element-bounded drag tolerance for Ctrl/Cmd+click in terminal.

Previously, Ctrl/Cmd+click on terminal links required pixel-perfect accuracy. Any mouse movement during the click would cancel the navigation, making it frustrating to click on links, especially on high-DPI displays or with sensitive mice.

Users can now click anywhere within a clickable element (file path, URL, hyperlink), drag the cursor anywhere within that same element's boundaries and release to trigger navigation

Implementation:

Stores detected element metadata (text and grid_range) on Ctrl/Cmd+mouse-down
Tracks cursor position during drag, preserving click state while within element bounds
Verifies element match on mouse-up before triggering navigation
Uses existing find_from_grid_point() for element detection

Before:

before.webm

After:

stillworking.webm

Release Notes:

terminal: Fixed an issue where ctrl|cmd+click on links was very sensitive to mouse movement. Clicking links now tolerates mouse movement within the same clickable element, making link navigation more reliable

cla-bot · 2025-11-12T12:40:32Z

We require contributors to sign our Contributor License Agreement, and we don't have @nihalxkumar on file. You can sign our CLA at https://zed.dev/cla. Once you've signed, post a comment here that says '@cla-bot check'.

cla-bot · 2025-11-12T12:42:27Z

We require contributors to sign our Contributor License Agreement, and we don't have @nihalxkumar on file. You can sign our CLA at https://zed.dev/cla. Once you've signed, post a comment here that says '@cla-bot check'.

cla-bot · 2025-11-12T12:42:28Z

The cla-bot has been summoned, and re-checked this pull request!

cla-bot · 2025-11-12T13:06:56Z

We require contributors to sign our Contributor License Agreement, and we don't have @nihalxkumar on file. You can sign our CLA at https://zed.dev/cla. Once you've signed, post a comment here that says '@cla-bot check'.

cla-bot · 2025-11-12T13:26:13Z

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probably-neb · 2025-11-18T15:17:04Z

Great work! Tested it and it feels much better than before.

cc @davewa who has been doing a bunch of work in this area recently. How does the code look to you?

crates/terminal/src/terminal.rs

davewa

Thanks for doing this work! I thought of a couple more changes that I think will improve/simplify this. Also, I think some of the comments just repeat the code, I'd prefer those be removed. Otherwise, looks good.

crates/terminal/src/terminal.rs

davewa

Also, I'd love to see a couple unit tests for this using VisualTestContext::simulate_event() 😎

davewa

You may have figured out that my review style is iterative. I hope you are having as much fun as I am, it is shaping up nicely! I noticed that the use of FindHyperlink here results in us always calling find_from_grid_point twice in a row on the same position, I added a suggestion there.

crates/terminal/src/terminal.rs

nihalxkumar · 2025-11-21T16:33:22Z

I really appreciate the reviews from you. Please keep them coming, they makes things better for everyone <3

probably-neb · 2025-11-21T19:04:20Z

Going to mark this as draft while you're addressing the review comments. Please request my review when you think this is ready @nihalxkumar!

Track hyperlink on mouse down and verify same link on mouse up, allowing ctrl+click to work even with slight mouse movement. Closes zed-industries#41994

Fix rustfmt violations in terminal ctrl+click implementation

- Remove redundant mouse_down_link field and OSC-8 handler - Simplify bounds check to use .contains() - Unify all clickable elements through find_from_grid_point()

- Rename mouse_down_detected_element to mouse_down_hyperlink - Change type to Option<(String, bool, Match)> to match find_from_grid_point - Simplify overlap check to equality comparison - Remove comments

nihalxkumar · 2025-11-22T12:34:58Z

the checks appear to be flaky

probably-neb · 2025-11-24T15:39:40Z

I'm only seeing tests you added failing. Are you referring to a different test flaking? Or just calling out that the tests you've added seem to be flaky?

nihalxkumar · 2025-11-24T16:18:16Z

I saw the Mac test failing on another PR. I am checking what needs to fixed here brb

davewa · 2025-11-24T16:39:55Z

Thinking about this more, it would be simpler, more dependable, and still give us the test coverage we are looking for here to have these tests just call Terminal::mouse_* methods directly...

…ts and fix lock handling

davewa

Looking really nice. I just added a few more comments, we're very close now 😎.

crates/terminal/src/terminal.rs

… test helpers

davewa

One last improvement, then I'd say this is ready!

crates/terminal/src/terminal.rs

…lper

davewa · 2025-11-25T16:36:10Z

In local testing, it doesn't seem to work anymore? One of our refactors must have regressed the feature... interesting...

nihalxkumar · 2025-11-25T16:42:08Z

I am limited by memory. I used to check every build before committing with cargo build -j 2
After 4242a75a162ad0a9809936ac04cc5a9df50c3c64 I only used to check the terminal crate, clippy and rustfmt.
Started a build now

nihalxkumar · 2025-11-25T18:17:02Z

@davewa It's still working

stillworking.webm

davewa · 2025-11-25T22:44:51Z

Yeah, it's working for me too now... I must have done something dumb earlier... 🤷‍♂️

nihalxkumar · 2025-11-26T06:14:12Z

@probably-neb It's ready

probably-neb · 2025-12-16T15:36:26Z

Hey sorry for the delay. This got buried in my notifications inbox. I've merged main and will merge this PR once CI is green.

Thanks for the great work @nihalxkumar!

kocsis1david · 2026-02-12T11:01:03Z

Thanks for fixing this.

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nihalxkumar changed the title ~~ctrl+click link detection with mouse movement~~ Ctrl+click link detection with mouse movement Nov 12, 2025

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cla-bot bot added the cla-signed The user has signed the Contributor License Agreement label Nov 12, 2025

nihalxkumar changed the title ~~Ctrl+click link detection with mouse movement~~ terminal: ctrl+click link detection with mouse movement Nov 12, 2025

nihalxkumar changed the title ~~terminal: ctrl+click link detection with mouse movement~~ terminal: Add ctrl+click link detection with mouse movement Nov 12, 2025

SomeoneToIgnore assigned probably-neb Nov 12, 2025

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davewa reviewed Nov 18, 2025

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probably-neb marked this pull request as draft November 21, 2025 19:04

nihalxkumar added 5 commits November 22, 2025 16:53

feat(terminal): improve ctrl+click link detection with mouse movement

fb12b6d

Track hyperlink on mouse down and verify same link on mouse up, allowing ctrl+click to work even with slight mouse movement. Closes zed-industries#41994

style: format terminal mouse handling code

735afd7

Fix rustfmt violations in terminal ctrl+click implementation

feat(terminal): clickable elements with ctrl+click and mouse movement

3125a11

refactor(terminal): simplify click detection per review

e5653ec

- Remove redundant mouse_down_link field and OSC-8 handler - Simplify bounds check to use .contains() - Unify all clickable elements through find_from_grid_point()

refactor(terminal): simplify implementation per review

4242a75

- Rename mouse_down_detected_element to mouse_down_hyperlink - Change type to Option<(String, bool, Match)> to match find_from_grid_point - Simplify overlap check to equality comparison - Remove comments

nihalxkumar force-pushed the fix/terminal-ctrl-click-tolerance branch 4 times, most recently from c7ca729 to db5f209 Compare November 22, 2025 11:57

nihalxkumar force-pushed the fix/terminal-ctrl-click-tolerance branch from db5f209 to 35bacb9 Compare November 22, 2025 12:01

terminal: hyperlink processing into separate method and add tests

8bd09ac

nihalxkumar force-pushed the fix/terminal-ctrl-click-tolerance branch from 35bacb9 to 8bd09ac Compare November 22, 2025 12:19

nihalxkumar added 2 commits November 25, 2025 00:25

terminal: replace VisualTestContext with direct event handlers in tes…

95f002f

…ts and fix lock handling

test(terminal): use secondary_key in hyperlink tests

7c2cf54

davewa reviewed Nov 24, 2025

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nihalxkumar added 2 commits November 25, 2025 14:39

refactor(terminal): simplify patterns, improve lock handling, extract…

eeee3ac

… test helpers

style(terminal): fix rustfmt formatting for test helper

fd602f6

davewa reviewed Nov 25, 2025

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crates/terminal/src/terminal.rs Outdated Show resolved Hide resolved

refactor(terminal): move terminal_bounds inside ctrl_mouse_move_to he…

e3ba188

…lper

nihalxkumar marked this pull request as ready for review November 25, 2025 16:15

esthertrapadoux added community champion Issues filed by our amazing community champions! 🫶 and removed community champion Issues filed by our amazing community champions! 🫶 labels Nov 26, 2025

zelenenka added this to Quality Week – December 2025 Nov 27, 2025

github-project-automation bot moved this to Community PRs in Quality Week – December 2025 Nov 27, 2025

Merge branch 'main' into fix/terminal-ctrl-click-tolerance

a06d8b7

probably-neb merged commit 935a7cc into zed-industries:main Dec 16, 2025
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github-project-automation bot moved this from Community PRs to Done in Quality Week – December 2025 Dec 16, 2025

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