Binding "Open/Close Inventory" to Tab only opens inventory

Confirmed for 19w12b

Yep, pretty annoying change, especially when the new TAB accessibility features don't effect any of the inventory UI's apart from Command Blocks as far as I can tell. Hopefully they fix this, or at least make it so if you assign TAB to inventory it will disable the new changes as a compromise, something I could easily live with

Confirmed for 19w13a

I noticed that pressing TAB when in the inventory highlights the recipe book button for some split seconds. So I figured they have coded a hotkey for opening/closing the recipe book but has not (yet) completed it. Because you can not find it in the controls section and it does not even work. 

The proper solution would be to finish this hotkey and I believe that would not be too hard. Otherwise, just retract this feature so we can use TAB for the inventory. Personally, I am so used to it that I will not play without it.

Confirmed for 19w13b

Confirmed for 19w14a

Extremely annoying! Can confirm for 19w14b.

Was able to re-create this in Minecraft 19w14b.

Confirmed for 1.14 pre-1

Can confirm still a problem in 1.14 pre-2

Confirmed for 1.14 pre-3

Confirmed for 1.14 pre-4

Confirmed for 1.14 pre-5

This problem seems to be caused by the tab key selecting the recipe book which overrides the close action. The simplest solution would be to disable the 'tab select' when the inventory button is bound to 'Tab'.

Confirmed for 1.14 release

Yes, same problem playing on Linux, 1.14 release.

Can confirm, 1.14 release on Linux.

I guess the most convenient solution would be to make the key for cycling through the trades or select the recipe book configurable. Then you can see the (tab) key is already bound or just change it to another key.

Confirmed on macOS. 1.14 release

Same issue for me. Java Edition 1.14, running on Windows 10.

Same issue here, 1.14 on Windows 10 and Linux.

Same issue, hope it gets resolved, 1.14 Windows 10

Confirmed for 1.14.1 pre-1

Confirmed for 1.14.1 pre-2

just updated to 1.14, windows 7, no mods, same issue. reeeeeally annoying.

Confirmed for 1.14.1 release

Confirmed for 1.14.1

Confirmed for 1.14.1

Confirmed for 1,14.2 Prerelease 1

Still in 1.14.2 Pre-Release 2

I understand the desire for this bug to get fixed, but you have no way to know it was postponed "for no reason" (comments being deleted have no bearing on that statement; they delete unhelpful discussion so they can focus on the bug at hand).

Also, the workaround is simple: press Escape to close menus for now. It's not that difficult to get used to, even if I would rather just be able to press Tab to close it as normal.

All they have to do to fix this is give us an option disable the ability to scroll through menus with the keyboard, or let us change the keys that do so. This should not have been a bug for a week let alone near 2 months. My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.

Sorry about this I have looked into it extensively and worked together with our accessibility team. Right now we need to have a certain degree of accessibility in the game or we are not allowed to do any more updates. One of the requirements is to be able to navigate in menus without using the mouse. Tab was implemented to have that functionality and it takes president in the inventory since there is a button in there that needs to be accessible. Trying to fix this issue has highlighted several issues with our system for assigning buttons to specific actions. If we fix the bug with tab not having to be bound to accessibility we have to make it possible to rebind the focus of buttons. Doing that will clash with showing players online on a server which is tab by default and to fix this we need to do more extensive work on our underlying system. Right now it is out of scope for us to fix this in 1.14 but is definitely something we want to fix further on why it is postponed.

Two possible solutions for this issue that I can think of, Maria.

1. Have an option to rebind navigation from tab to another key.

2. As previously mentioned, have an option to disable tab navigation within the Accessibility Settings that already exist within the game.

Having accessibility features is great and I applaud your work as a team for striving to add more, however this one in particular conflicts with many of the current user base. Both solutions will fix this while still having the feature in place.

The first is simple but may not be intuitive as tab is the navigation key across all software, which would make the second more desirable. Not many people who have tab set as their inventory key will need this accessibility feature so in addition to having it toggle-able, anyone with inventory bound to tab could have the feature disabled by default as opposed to the global default of it being enabled.

1. Not possible (yet) because of technical reasons, as explained by @unknown above.

2. Probably not possible because Mojang is required to provide accessibility features. And it must be impossible to accidentally turn accessibility features off, since users who rely on it then couldn't re-enable it.

What if in addition to an option to disable/enable, there was a function key bound to toggle it? It would act in a similar manner to the way F11 toggles fullscreen. The client remembers that and it would work well for this I'd imagine. There are many vacant function keys available. So if someone accidentally disabled the feature, they could re-enable it by pressing the key?

Yeah, aren't there some free Function keys available? I feel like a way to toggle this Tab functionality (or even just offload it entirely onto an F key) would be a lot better than permanently removing a crucial game function on a very commonly used key.

The arrow keys also seem like a suitable replacement for using Tab.

Effectively, you could have both, and when Tab is rebound to open/close inventory, then Tab (and only Tab) would have its accessibility feature disabled. The arrow keys would still work as normal.

In text fields, this would have the effect of being able to focus into the field, and then to get out again, you would have to press up at the start of the text field (as it makes sense for the first press to act as Home on the first line) or down at the end. Left and right would simply shift between characters.

Arrow keys being assigned to navigating menus would definitely make more sense than spamming the tab key, moreso than tab being commonly bound as the inventory open/close button

These are all good ideas, but for the reasons that @unknown mentioned above, they won't be implemented until 1.15 earliest.

Right now it is out of scope for us to fix this in 1.14 but is definitely something we want to fix further on why it is postponed.

I've been using Tab for 9 years. You've killed it for me.

Are there any plans on fixing this or do I have give up hope of playing any updates past 1.13 for the foreseeable future? 

It's far from a perfect solution, but a friendly reminder that until they fix the issue (I don't see how it's so difficult to fix that 1.15 pre-releases are coming out with it) there is a work-around you can use to enjoy your game in the mean time. 

Razer Synapse (if you have a Razer keyboard), iCUE (if you have a Corsair keyboard), Logitech SetPoint (for Logitech keyboards), SteelSeries Engine (for SteelSeries keyboards), KeyTweak, Map Keyboard, Sharp Keys, ATNSoft Key Remapper, and probably many more made by all kinds of third party people and gaming keyboard manufacturers all let you remap specific keys for as long as you have the program open/the profile set. You can download one of these and temporarily swap Tab and E while playing, and it'll go back to feeling like normal.

We shouldn't need additional software to enjoy games, but if we have to...

You actually cant remap your keyboard with Logitech Software, you will need a third person software to do that...

So now im literally not playing my world in 1.14.4, is horrible (at least for me) to play with other configuration.

It shouldn't be terribly hard to get used to pressing Esc to exit menus. It's not ideal, but it's become second nature to me and only took a day or two.

I tried, i lost.

I lost as well

We shouldn't have to get used to something that was previously a feature and now is not.

Also the reason it was changed (to allow the tab key to make menus more accessible) isn't even functional so it makes no sense to break it now.

Please prioritize this higher and make sure it makes it into 1.15.

Prio up please. I nearly totally skipped 1.14.x because of that bug.

The reason for why this has not been fixed yet has been explained by @unknown in her comment above. Basically, the game needs to fulfil certain accessibility requirements, and fixing this bug seems to be fairly difficult with Minecraft's current GUI system if you don't want to break the ability to navigate through GUIs with Tab.

I'll ask whether the priority of this bug can be raised, but don't expect this issue to be fixed too soon.

Hi! any update on this bug? I've been waiting the entire year for 1.15 just for this.

I don't have any news to share besides what I've written above. 1.15 will most likely not address this issue.

I don't believe that is a valid point Ethan we don't know that for sure, still i ask, why does this bug still have a low priority? Surely there are more people than just the 109 votes and 68 watchers that want this resolved.

We haven't been able to enjoy the game at the fullest extent, the possibility of freely changing our hotkeys is a must for the play ability and enjoyment of the game, not having it translates to waning degrees of usage.

Stating this, I propose a change in the priority to at least a mid level.

There's been a lot of commenting on this ticket without additional information for diagnosing this issue. Just because you too are affected doesn't warrant commenting and emailing everyone else of that fact.

Mojang is aware of this ticket and its impact, which is the the purpose of the bug tracker. If you would like to contribute your name to the list, you may vote for the ticket which does not email everyone. Further discussion should occur elsewhere, like our reddit community or Discord.

Edit: I am very sorry Ezekiel, I didn't see your post until after I'd hit submit since I was typing before you posted yours.

I'm pretty sure Ethan has a valid point. Tab doesn't actually do anything but alienate players that have been using Tab as an inventory button for years.

As of right now, Tab literally doesn't do anything but highlight the recipe book button to be blue. You can't open the recipe book with it, enter, or any other key on the keyboard - you still have to move the mouse up to it and click it. (Technically maybe having the button blue makes it easier to see if you can't see the color green?) But once you've clicked it open with the mouse, Tab still doesn't do anything. It doesn't allow you to move through different items on the page, or tabs in the list... the only thing it does is turn the button blue... ...and also block you from using Tab as the inventory button.

It's quite literally making the game less accessible for a decent group of people (check the watchers and voters here, and do a quick search on Google/Minecraft Forums/Reddit. A lot of people are complaining) but doesn't actually help anyone.

Also, what I find most hilarious is the upper management. "Right now we need to have a certain degree of accessibility in the game or we are not allowed to do any more updates." sounds like a suit who has no idea what the game actually needs, but wants to announce to shareholders that they're making improvements to the game. "One of the requirements is to be able to navigate in menus without using the mouse" but yet you can't actually navigate the game without using the mouse. You can't open the recipe book (which as someone who has been playing since 2011... you don't need it to play the game anyway) or navigate through it, or craft anything with it. Or move items around in your inventory, or move items from the inventory to the crafting grid... you can only turn a button blue with Tab. Oh, and can no longer use it as a normal button.

I feel bad for the devs, I really do. I know it's not entirely their fault (they could make fixing a bug they introduced a higher priority). But it still comes off as making the game less accessible in the name of greater accessibility.

This is not a discussion forum. All further comments that don't add any new information to the ticket will be removed. This issue has been effectively postponed until the UI system is rewritten, and complaining here in the comments won't change that.

Ok, let me add a suggestion to the ticket.

You don't need to rewrite the UI to fix this issue. In the "Controls" dialog, on the "Open/Close Inventory" line, (and possibly in others) add a warning icon (⚠️) when it is set to "TAB" (or some other key that interferes with accessibility like ESC, Enter, etc.) and add a (accessible!) note to the setting that states that this setting might interfere with accessibility. Then, if the user still agrees to go ahead and clicks done, make sure that it takes precedence to accessibility and closes the inventory.

I'm still playing 1.13 because of this issue.