P: PS 27.0 TabKey navigation not working in dialogs on macOS Tahoe 26.0.1

I'm a mouse/pen guy and rarely use shortcut keys in dialogs beyond Return or Escape. I use Photoshop tool shortcuts a lot though.

@Conrad_C that's why I prefer Keyboard Navigation, so I can always (ahem) tab-tab-spacebar without having to guess or remember how each app works. I do remember having used "first letter of the button" back in the day though.

I just tried what you did, and all of those are working for me in Tahoe with PS 27.0. It's only tab to move focus that fails. I can live with that, but would be nice if it was fixed.

This is just a side note, but over the years I’ve definitely seen that various Mac apps can have different shortcuts in the Open/Save dialog box.

Most support Enter/Return for OK and Esc for Cancel.

Some also support Command . (period) for Cancel.

Some support Command-D for Don’t Save, and any other buttons can be “clicked” by pressing Command and the first letter of the button.

Some don’t require the command key and you can just press the first letter of the button, so in those apps you can just press D for Don’t Save.

So when I try a keyboard shortcut and it doesn’t work in a certain app, I try it the other way (with or without the Command key).

In macOS 15, I just tried the “Save changes…?”  dialog box in Photoshop, and it responds to both D and Command-D for Don’t Save.

Photoshop also responded to both Esc and Command . for Cancel.

That’s nice and flexible!

(But there are other internal Photoshop dialog boxes where keyboard shortcuts don’t work as expected.)

@ExUSA In 26.11.0 CMD-D wasn't working (for me at least), but you're right it works in 27.0, so at least there's a way to avoid having to reach for the mouse. Thanks for the tip!

Microsoft's office apps also use a custom dialog for unsaved changed, where tab works.

So I think the issue really has something to do with how they've coded those dialogs in Photoshop specifically that's broken keyboard navigation on Tahoe. But at least CMD-D now works 🥲

In the unsaved dialog, Esc presses the Cancel button. whether it is highlighted or not. Command-D is Don't Save. That's standard across all apps. However, yes it looks like the dialog is broken specifically in Photoshop.

I tested a number of other apps- Pages, Word, TextEdit all use a different type of dialog for unsaved changes. VSCode (which is an Electron app) is the only one with the same unsaved dialog as Photoshop, and the Tab key works to move between buttons there. BBEdit has a custom dialog.

This is the Tahoe dialog for unsaved changes in Apple Pages, Adobe should be switching to this format:

@ExUSA No, nothing I can think of. This isn't the regular save dialog (where tab works), it's only in the dialog that shows when trying to close a document with unsaved changes and (from what I've seen so far) the dialog that asks if you want to discard changes to e.g. a text field. Are you saying that tab works in all of these dialogs for you?

Do you have any software (Default Folder type stuff) that would modify dialogs? Since this is working for me on Tahoe, it might be something on your computer.

@Sameer K I've now tried again on Photoshop 27.0.0 and Photoshop (Beta) 27.1.0 and can confirm I'm experiencing the same issue still. Tab key removes focus from the Cancel button (where it is by default when the "save changes before closing?" dialog opens) but doesn't move it to the other buttons. Focus just vanishes and no number of tab key presses returns it.

It appears to be working fine here with Keyboard Navigation enabled. 16" 2019 Intel MacBook Pro, Tahoe 26.0.1 and today's release of Photoshop 27.0. Partial control was working with Navigation disabled, the tab key just didn't move between all dialog box controls.

Yes I tried that too, but it's not a viable solution for users who don't need it. And besides, Keyboard Navigation by itself should be enough as it works in other apps and even those Photoshop dialogs that use standard AppKit code.