See also elementary/code#1719. It would be good to agree on a common shortcut to switch to and from the sidebar. I think <Ctrl><Alt>Left <Ctrl><Alt>Right is more memorable on balance. Not sure how to make these shortcuts discoverable though.

Thanks, I will update this PR to change the keyboard shortcut to <Ctrl><Alt>Left.

(A thing that comes to mind: do people with a RTL (Right-To-Left) setting see the sidebar on the right side? And isn't a fixed directional-key shortcut confusing in that case? I assume that this won't be the only place this is encountered...)

Heiy everyone.
It’s great to see we are keeping the keyboard shortcuts consistent across the elementary ecosystem. Using Left and Right has felt quite natural while implementing it in Code (#1719)..
Regarding the RTL layout question, that's a very valid and interesting point! I imagine GTK might handle flipping directional keybindings automatically based on the system's text direction, but it's definitely something good to keep an eye on for the future..
Thanks for working on this

I installed the Arabic language and took a look, and indeed the sidebar is on the right, and I still have to press <Ctrl><Alt>Left to get to it, which is not great. The same goes for navigating in column view by the way, the right arrow opens a new column (on the left).

I don't think this should block this PR, because it is not a regression to the current status, but I wonder if there is something in some of the underlying libraries that might help with abstracting this. If there isn't, perhaps directional arrow keys should only be used very cautiously in shortcuts.

I agree that dealing with RTL locales should be dealt with but can be done in another PR. It should be simple enough to alter the actions depending on the StateFlagsof the window (DIR_RTL or not).

I think that we should change the corresponding <Ctrl>Right shortcut as well

I can't find an existing <Ctrl>Right shortcut. Where is it?

Should I implement a focus_tab_view action (which I can't find either) and connect a <Ctrl><Shift>Right shortcut to it? Or am I not looking correctly?

I'd be happy to add it.

Hmm, both <Ctrl>Right Right do work in main in LTR mode - not sure why. In RTL mode. Left returns to the view (as expected) but not <Ctrl>Left. Within the view the movement is the wrong way round so that needs fixing (elsewhere) as well. I guess this behaviour must be built into Gtk somewhere because I cannot find in the Files code either.

I don't think adding <Ctrl><Alt>Right as a paired action has any downside though so may as well do it.

I added an explicit accelerator for focusing on the current container (this re-uses the existing focus logic that was already present).

I'll add a separate PR (that builds on this one) that ensures proper directionality of accelerators in RTL languages.

@stan-janssen
Thanks for adding the paired shortcut. reusing the existing focus logic for returning to the current container seems like a clean solution, & handling the RTL directionality in a follow-up PR makes sense to me.

Looks good from my side🎉

Might be better to focus on the follow-up PR which superceded this one anyway.