Notepad++ search window not focussed on "Find what:" anymore after pressing "CTRL+F"

Issue Description

On a Wine Notepad++ installation, I am noticing that my Notepad++ installation does not automatically put my caret/cursor in the Find what: textbox that is inside the Find menu.

Expected Behaviour

I would expect that if:

1. I put my cursor in an arbitrary place inside a notepad++ file, without selecting anything.
2. Press Ctrl+f
3. Type the letter aThat it put's the a inside the textbox that is preceded with: Find what:. (Such that when I press enter, that it starts searching for the next occurence of a inside the file that is opened.

Observed behaviour

The search box is opened after pressing Ctrl+f, and when I type: a nothing happens. However, when I press f, it briefly (for a fraction of a second) switches (the gray buttons on the right, not the tab in the search window) to: Mark all, as captured in the screenshot below:

Doubts

The behaviour with the f button seems to me like my keyboard has a hanging ctrl or alt button or something which could result in me thinking I am sending an f signal, whereas in reality I might be sending something like Alt+f. To exclude this, I registered my keystrokes using screenkey, which showed me pressing ctrl+f and a (without any additional keystrokes).

Question

It is not clear to me whether this is a bug, whether I am doing something wrong, or whether this is a (new) feature. I would like to ask: How can I ensure the caret is placed automatically in the textbox next to Find what: in the search tab after pressing Ctrl+f, such that it enters my typing/keystrokes into that textbox when I start typing?

Software:

Ubuntu:

lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 21.10
Release: 21.10
Codename: impish

Wine:

wine-5.0.3 (Ubuntu 5.0.3-3ubuntu2)

Notepad-plus-plus:

Notepad++ v8.2.1 (64-bit)

Note, I installed Notepad++ on a clean Ubuntu installation. Additionally I've removed it and reinstalled it twice without seeing a change in the observed behaviour.

1 Answer

If Notepad++ is misbehaving, I would normally counsel to uninstall it, clean up all its folders, then reinstall.

However, as you are using it on Wine, this is not a true Windows environment, so some Windows applications may malfunction in this environment. The problem might then not be in Notepad++ itself.

You could try to install the snap version, as explained inNotepad++ on Linux is a Reality Thanks to This Snap Application, as it uses its own embedded version of Wine, so might work better.

If the above doesn't help, you should address the problem to the Wine forums.