JLukeW

I'm glad this post was resurrected. 8 months later, this is still an issue for me. My workflow improved when I bound Ctrl+Enter to "Deselect" (or "Deselect All"?), but I continue to recommend that Affinity look into the option of mimicking some more traditional behavior for text editing.

"The escape key is usually used to imply cancelling (preventing) something or closing / backing out of something..." Agreed. Other software treats creating a text box with text as an action that can be cancelled, and Affinity doesn't. That's okay. The issue is that Affinity is the only piece of software that has only one valid keypress to non-destructively finish text editing (and re-enable keyboard shortcuts instead of text entry). The escape key does something different in almost all other software under the same conditions. It is not rebindable, and there are no alternatives that behave as a "finish text editing" key. Even if its behavior is "appropriate" in Affinity, it is unique. My suggestion above is simply to create an action target that acts as an alternative to pressing escape.

Right. The idea I'm trying to convey is that unassigning the ctrl+enter shortcut is not sufficient to solve the issue the people in this thread are discussing.

What happens when the shortcut is reassigned to nothing: Click, type text, press ctrl+enter (has no effect), press "b" to select brush, "b" appears after text. Backspace, press "esc.", press "b" to select brush.

The issue with not having a valid keyboard deselection target is that there's currently no alternative to pressing "Esc." in order to use a keyboard shortcut to select another tool. "Escape" is (rightly) "undo text" in every other design application I've used (Corel, Adobe, GIMP). Current workflow: Click to start text, type, press esc. (once or twice depending on context), press "b" to select brush, paint/draw. Desired workflow: Click to start text, type, press ctrl+enter (or have an assignable target for an alternative shortcut), press "b" to select brush, paint/draw.

I'm experiencing the same issue in the Windows version of Affinity Photo (1.8.3.641).

I've found one workaround that seems okay for now (in Affinity Photo, at least): Change the Ctrl+Enter shortcut to "Deselect Layers". It makes continuing to work with that text layer awkward, though.

Right now, to switch from text to another tool requires pressing "esc" or a mouse click before the shortcut for another tool. The universal command in other applications for "finish editing text" or "submit text" is Ctrl+Enter (Adobe, Microsoft, Browsers, and even on this forum!). Can we have a valid command to assign Ctrl+Enter to that mimics the escape key currently required to exit text editing mode?

I, too, have registered just for this topic. It's extremely frustrating to go from Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Gmail, Microsoft Word, Excel, and other applications which follow a similar pattern for ctrl+enter to Affinity, where ctrl+enter irreversibly destroys text. A possible solution is to add an option ("Exit Text Tool" / "Confirm Text") to the Keyboard Shortcuts panel, or an option in settings to toggle between the two default behaviors (Convert to Curves vs. End Text Editing). My workflow in Affinity Photo (and Adobe Photoshop) is almost exclusively text-based, and my ability to move back and forth is greatly hampered by the lack of a valid ctrl+enter keyboard shortcut target.