Focus & Navigation

AZUREAL uses a keyboard-driven focus model. One pane holds focus at any time, and the focused pane receives all keyboard input. Visual borders update to reflect which pane is active.

Focus Cycle

Tab and Shift+Tab cycle focus through the four focusable panes:

FileTree  →  Viewer  →  Session  →  Input
    ↑                                  │
    └──────────────────────────────────┘

• Tab moves forward (FileTree to Viewer to Session to Input, then wraps).
• Shift+Tab moves backward (the reverse order).
• The Worktree Tab Row and Status Bar are not part of the focus cycle – they are controlled by their own dedicated keys.

Focus and Overlays

Several panes host overlay panels that replace their content temporarily (session list, filetree options, help). The focus system interacts with overlays as follows:

• Tab closes overlays. Pressing Tab while an overlay is open dismisses the overlay and advances focus to the next pane.
• Shift+Tab preserves some overlays. When the session list overlay is open and Shift+Tab would land on the FileTree, the overlay stays open. This allows quickly glancing at the file tree without losing your place in the session list.
• Click outside dismisses overlays. Clicking on any pane that is not the overlay’s host pane closes the overlay and focuses the clicked pane.

Mouse Focus

Clicking any pane immediately sets focus to that pane, bypassing the Tab cycle. This is the fastest way to jump to a non-adjacent pane. See Mouse Support for the full click behavior reference.

Worktree Tab Row Navigation

The tab row is outside the focus cycle but has its own navigation keys:

• [ – switch to the previous worktree tab (wraps around).
• ] – switch to the next worktree tab (wraps around).
• Shift+M – toggle main-branch browse mode (highlights the [★ main] tab in yellow).
• Click any tab to select it directly.

Switching worktrees via the tab row does not change which pane has focus.

Git Mode Navigation

In Git Mode (Shift+G), the focus cycle changes to match the git panel layout:

• Tab / Shift+Tab cycles through the three git-specific panes (Actions, Files, Commits). The Viewer always shows the diff for the selected file or commit but is not a separate focus target.
• The bottom bar shows Tab/⇧Tab:cycle | Enter as a reminder.
• Shift+G or Esc exits Git Mode and returns to the normal focus cycle.

Pane-Specific Navigation

Each pane accepts its own set of keys when focused. A brief summary:

Detailed keybindings for each pane are covered in the Keybindings & Input Modes chapter.