When composing in GMail using Safari, the message sometimes loses focus, causing keystokes to be interpreted as shortcuts

Question

For example, if I press the down arrow or right arrow while replying to an email in order to navigate to a new or different line of text, instead, the "Show trimmed content" ellipsis (three little dots) at the bottom of the textarea gets focus, and the textarea loses focus. If I continue typing, the keystrokes are interpreted as keyboard shortcuts, and I can end up muting, archiving, etc. messages accidentally. How can I prevent this behavior?

Similar reports:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/1c5uhvo/safari_issues_with_gmail_while_typing/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/GMail/comments/1795pfn/safari_keyboard_shortcut_misfire_jumping_to_show/

Answer 1

Removing the tabIndex attribute on the ellipsis' element prevents it from receiving focus.

The fix is to create a bookmarklet (like with https://make-bookmarklets.com) with this code:

new MutationObserver(() => {
  document.querySelector('div[aria-label="Show trimmed content"]').removeAttribute("tabIndex");
}).observe(document.body, {subtree: true, childList: true});

The bookmark's address becomes:

javascript:(function()%7Bnew%20MutationObserver((()=%3E%7Bdocument.querySelector('div%5Baria-label=%22Show%20trimmed%20content%22%5D').removeAttribute(%22tabIndex%22)%7D)).observe(document.body,%7Bsubtree:!0,childList:!0%7D);%7D());

Drag the bookmarklet to the Favorites Bar.

Whenever you open or refresh a GMail tab, click the bookmarklet to disable any future ellipses from receiving focus.