preview disappears when moving selection down (kitty protocol via Ghostty)

[gary-host-laptop]

Issue description

preview disappears when moving the selection down inside a folder. the first highlighted item shows a preview, but when moving the highlight down the UI briefly shows two items selected and the preview panel is cleared.

How do you reproduce it?

1. run rovr under Ghostty with the Kitty image protocol enabled
2. enter a folder with files so the preview panel is active
3. highlight the first item (preview appears)
4. move the selection down
5. observe that two items may appear selected briefly and the preview panel disappears

What is the expected result of the steps?

the preview panel should remain visible and update to show the newly highlighted item.

What actually happened after doing the steps?

The preview panel is cleared when moving the highlight down, two items appear selected and no preview is shown. this reproduces reliably when using Ghostty with the Kitty image protocol enabled.

Affected Operating System(s)

• Windows
• macOS
• Linux

How can this be fixed?

No response

[gary-host-laptop]

some more system info, plus i forgot to mention that i'm also using zellij (although unsure if it's relevant since the issue is more likely on rovr's side.

[NSPC911]

Hi, can you show a video?

[gary-host-laptop]

here's a video, i hope you can better understand what i mean now. i think it could be related to kitty.

2026-09-04-11.22.49.472684748.mp4

[NSPC911]

I'm not sure what you are trying to show

I saw a cut at about 0:29-0:30, and your preview was disabled most of the time. There was also a cut(?) at 0:48-0:49 where the image appeared for some reason, before disappearing. Are you sure this is uncut footage? What is your current configuration?

[gary-host-laptop]

there wasn't a cut, i literally just moved down and rovr pushes me to the bottom of the list and selects 2 items, i didn't cut anything. i activate the preview, see one image, move down, the item selection automatically selects 2 items (without me doing anything) and pushes me down. below is my config, it was generated based on the tui setup, i didn't do any special configuration.

#:schema https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NSPC911/rovr/refs/tags/v0.10.1.post1/src/rovr/assets/schema.json
[interface]
use_reactive_layout = true
show_hidden_files = false
show_tab_close_button = false

[interface.image_viewer]
protocol = "TGP"

[interface.compact_mode]
buttons = true
panels = true

[settings.editor.file]
run = "hx"
orphan = false

[settings.editor.folder]
run = "hx"
orphan = false

[settings.editor.bulk_editor]
run = "hx"
rename_show_as_mapping = false

[theme]
default = "tokyo-night"

transparent = true

[keybinds]
toggle_pin = ["P"]
toggle_pinned_sidebar = ["S"]
toggle_preview_sidebar = ["I"]
toggle_footer = ["F"]
toggle_menu_wrapper = ["M"]
focus_toggle_pinned_sidebar = ["s"]
focus_file_list = ["escape"]
focus_toggle_preview_sidebar = ["i"]
focus_toggle_path_switcher = ["ctrl+l"]
focus_search = ["slash"]
focus_toggle_processes = ["#"]
focus_toggle_clipboard = ["c"]
focus_toggle_metadata = ["m"]
copy = ["y"]
paste = ["p"]
cut = ["x"]
delete = ["d"]
rename = ["r"]
new = ["a"]
bulk_create = ["A"]
zip = ["E"]
unzip = ["ctrl+e"]
up = ["k", "up"]
down = ["j", "down"]
up_tree = ["h", "left"]
down_tree = ["l", "right", "enter"]
bypass_up_tree = ["H"]
bypass_down_tree = ["L"]
page_up = ["ctrl+b", "pageup"]
page_down = ["ctrl+f", "pagedown"]
home = ["g"]
end = ["G"]
hist_previous = ["u", "backspace"]
hist_next = ["ctrl+r", "space"]
toggle_visual = ["v"]
toggle_all = ["%", "ctrl+a"]
toggle_hidden_files = ["full_stop"]
toggle_select_item = []
select_up = ["K", "shift+up"]
select_down = ["J", "shift+down"]
select_page_up = ["shift+pageup"]
select_page_down = ["shift+pagedown"]
select_home = ["shift+home"]
select_end = ["shift+end"]
tab_next = ["ctrl+j"]
tab_previous = ["ctrl+k"]
tab_new = ["n"]
tab_close = ["w"]
preview_scroll_left = ["h", "left"]
preview_scroll_right = ["l", "right"]
preview_select_left = ["H", "shift+left"]
preview_select_right = ["L", "shift+right"]
show_keybinds = ["?"]
quit_app = ["q", "ctrl+q"]
command_palette = "ctrl+p"
suspend_process = ["ctrl+z"]
open = ["o"]
open_editor = ["e"]

[keybinds.extra_copy]
open_popup = ["Y"]
copy_to_rovr = ["y"]
copy_highlighted = ["c"]
copy_to_system_clip = ["s"]
copy_current_directory = ["d"]

[keybinds.change_sort_order]
open_popup = [","]
name = ["a"]
extension = ["e"]
natural = ["n"]
size = ["s"]
created = ["c"]
modified = ["m"]
descending = ["d"]

[keybinds.delete_files]
trash = ["d"]
delete = ["x"]
cancel = ["c", "escape"]

[keybinds.trash]
restore = ["r"]
purge = ["x"]
empty = ["E"]
cancel = ["c", "escape"]

[keybinds.filename_conflict]
overwrite = ["o"]
skip = ["s"]
rename = ["r"]
cancel = ["c", "escape"]
dont_ask_again = ["a"]

[keybinds.file_in_use]
retry = ["r"]
skip = ["s"]
cancel = ["c", "escape"]
dont_ask_again = ["a"]

[keybinds.filter_modal]
exit = ["escape"]
down = ["ctrl+j", "down"]
up = ["ctrl+k", "up"]
page_up = ["ctrl+b", "pageup"]
page_down = ["ctrl+f", "pagedown"]

[keybinds.yes_or_no]
yes = ["y"]
no = ["n", "escape"]
dont_ask_again = ["a"]

[plugins.rg]
enabled = true
keybinds = ['\\']

[plugins.fd]
enabled = true
keybinds = ['f']

[plugins.bat]
enabled = true

[plugins.zoxide]
enabled = true
keybinds = ['z']

[plugins.poppler]
enabled = true

[plugins.file_one]
enabled = true

[NSPC911]

Huh, that's just very, very weird. I'll need to get back home and check, I'm not on my Cachy setup rn, it probably is zellij not liking textual-image's approach to TGP.

Nothing seems out of the ordinary in your config.

[gary-host-laptop]

i tested it on kitty terminal without zellij and the bug is not reproducible, so yeah, probably some zellij + rovr issue.

[NSPC911]

Zellij does support Kitty Image Protocol as mentioned in zellij-org/zellij#5428, I'll let an agent look into fixing this, this is some very weird behaviour.

[NSPC911]

Oops

[gary-host-laptop]

yes, what zellij does not have yet is support for unicode placeholder (U=1) image placements zellij-org/zellij#5531 but i'm actually running zellij with this fix (i cloned the repo with the fix since it's not yet merged upstream), so initially i thought that might be the issue but i don't see how it would be possible. unless what's going wrong is that maybe the unicode placeholder logic gets crazy and causes this. as a reference, before this fix superfile didn't show previews, so i thought i would find something similar in rovr but it seems to not be the case.

[NSPC911]

I'm guessing the almighty, the divine, the elite, the one and only god, yazi works fine?