wadamesh/TLORA_PAGER_SHORTCUTS.md

T-LoRa Pager: Keyboard & Rotary Encoder Guide

The LilyGo T-LoRa Pager has no touchscreen and no trackball — every screen, every setting, and every chat is driven entirely by the physical QWERTY keyboard and the rotary encoder knob. If you're coming from the T-Deck or Heltec V4 (touch-first), this is the one board where learning a handful of gestures up front pays off immediately. This guide covers both radio variants (LR1121 and SX1262) — the UI and input handling are identical on both.

The two inputs

• Keyboard — a physical QWERTY matrix with a Space bar, Backspace, Enter, a Shift key, and an orange Fn/Alt key (bottom-left). No dedicated Esc, arrow keys, or number row — those are covered by combos below.
• Rotary encoder — turn to move the on-screen focus highlight; click (press the knob) to select. It's your only pointing device, so almost every screen is navigable with turn + click alone.

Everything below only fires while you're not actively typing into a text field — if a field is focused and you're typing into it, letters type normally and these combos step out of the way.

Rotary encoder

Gesture	Action	Keyboard equivalent
Turn	Move focus to the next/previous item on screen	Fn (Alt) tapped alone moves forward one step (NEXT only — no keyboard way to go backward)
Short click	Select / confirm the focused item	Enter
Hold ~1 s, then release	Back: closes a popup → closes an open chat → goes Home → Esc (whichever applies first)	Backspace held ~1 s
Fn (Alt) + turn, on a main tab	Jump directly between the 5 main tabs (Chats / Contacts / Home / Map / Settings)	none — encoder only
Fn (Alt) + turn, inside a settings page or chat	Scroll the page up/down	none — encoder only
Turn, with a dropdown open	Scroll through the dropdown's options	none — encoder only
Turn, with the accent picker open	Cycle through the accent variants (see below)	none — encoder only (Fn+Space to enter is shared)
Turn, with the @-mention list open	Cycle through matching contacts (see below)	none — encoder only
Turn, at the oldest/newest loaded message in an open chat	Loads more history in that direction and keeps going — see Chat screen	none — encoder only

The knob doubles as your only way to reach the bottom tab bar — since there's no touch to tap an icon, Fn+turn while on any main tab is the fastest way to switch sections.

Chat screen

An open chat has no touch-only jump-to-oldest/jump-to-latest buttons on this board — everything is reachable by turning and clicking, and the encoder behaves a bit differently here than anywhere else in the app.

Turning through messages

Message history is loaded lazily: only the messages currently near the viewport actually exist as on-screen items, and older/newer ones are pulled in as you approach them. Turning the encoder normally moves the focus highlight one message at a time, and at the edge of what's currently loaded, it keeps going — the turn instead scrolls the list to pull in the next batch of history, then continues moving the highlight onto it. You'll only ever land outside the message list (see below) once you've genuinely reached the very oldest or very newest message in the whole conversation — never mid-history.

Leaving the message list

Turning past the oldest loaded message (top edge), once there's truly nothing more to load, wraps around to whatever the last focusable item on the screen is — the channel-settings gear in an open channel, or the Send button in a DM (a DM has no gear to reach). This is plain focus wrap, the same as reaching the end of any other list in the app; there's no chat-specific handling for this edge.

Turning past the newest loaded message (bottom edge) moves into the reply row below the messages: quick-reply (△) → emoji → text box → Send. Turning further past Send is chat-specific: in a channel it goes to the channel-settings gear; in a DM (nothing to reach there) it returns you to the newest message instead.

The reply row

Below the messages, turning steps through: quick-reply (△) → emoji → text box → Send, in that order, in both directions — nothing is skipped. Turning past the △ chip (toward the messages) always jumps straight to the newest message, regardless of channel or DM.

Backspace and Fn (Alt) — leaving vs. catching up

These two keys are your shortcuts in and out of "reading mode" on this screen, and they do different things depending on whether you've got unread messages:

• Fn (Alt) tapped alone — jumps straight to the newest message and moves focus into the text box, ready to type a reply. This is the deliberate "I'm done reading, let me respond" gesture — it works regardless of where your focus currently is in the chat.
• Backspace (tap) — jumps to whichever message needs your attention:
  • If there are unread messages, it jumps to the first one — right below the "NEW ----" divider — and selects it, so you can then turn forward through your unread messages in order, oldest-of-the-unread first.
  • If nothing is unread, it jumps to the newest message instead (same destination as Fn+Alt, but leaves focus on the message itself rather than the text box).

Backspace's override above only applies while you're inside an open chat and not actively editing the text box — the usual rule from the top of this guide; with a field focused, Backspace deletes a character as normal. Fn (Alt) tap's override fires the same way whether or not the text box already has focus, since landing there is the whole point of the gesture.

Keyboard layout

Base layer (no modifier):

q  w  e  r  t  y  u  i  o  p
a  s  d  f  g  h  j  k  l  [Enter]
   z  x  c  v  b  n  m
[Space]

Hold Fn (Alt) for numbers/symbols instead:

1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  0
*  /  +  -  =  :  '  "  @
   _  $  ;  ?  !  ,  .
[Space]

Shift and Caps Lock

• Hold Shift + a letter: that letter (or letters, for as long as you hold Shift) types uppercase — released, typing goes back to lowercase. Real momentary Shift, just like a normal keyboard.
• Hold Fn (Alt), then press Shift: while you're editing a text field, toggles Caps Lock on/off — stays uppercase until you repeat the chord. Anywhere else (not editing a field), the chord does nothing.
• Shift alone, tapped with nothing else, does nothing (as expected).
• Hold Fn (Alt), then press Backspace: jumps straight to the Home screen — works everywhere, including while you're actively editing a field (unlike Alt+Shift above, this one isn't context-dependent). Doesn't delete a character or trigger the plain-Backspace gestures below.

Special keys

Key	While editing a text field	Otherwise
Enter	Send / submit / newline	Select the focused item — or, if a chat message bubble is focused, opens its action menu (Ack / Mention / Copy / Info / Block)
Backspace (tap)	Delete a character	In an open chat: jump to your first unread message, or the newest message if nothing's unread — see Chat screen
Backspace (hold ~1 s)	—	Same as the encoder's long-press: Back
Backspace (hold ~1 s) while the screen is locked	—	Unlock the screen
Space (tap)	Types a space	—
Space (double-tap, within 250 ms)	Switches between English and your configured secondary keyboard layout	—
Space (hold ~1 s)	—	Locks the screen (shows a "Locking…" progress bar; tapping any key cancels)
Fn (Alt) tapped alone (press+release, nothing else)	—	Moves focus to the next field/item — a keyboard-only substitute for a turn of the encoder. In an open chat: jumps to the newest message and focuses the text box instead — see Chat screen

The BOOT button (top of the device) instantly wakes the screen from idle-dim. It does not unlock a screen you've manually locked with the Space-hold gesture above — for that, hold Backspace.

Accented characters

Typing a letter that has accent variants (all vowels, plus n c s y t z l r, both cases) pops up a small row of alternatives above the field. To pick one without touch:

1. Fn (Alt) + Space — jumps focus into the popup.
2. Turn the encoder — cycles through the variants.
3. Enter — confirms your choice and replaces the letter you just typed.
4. Backspace — dismisses the popup and keeps the plain letter.

@-mentions

Typing @ followed by a few letters of a contact's name pops up a matching list in a channel/group chat. Unlike the accent picker above, this one grabs the encoder immediately — no Fn+Space needed, since it only appears once you've deliberately started typing a mention:

1. Turn the encoder — cycles through the matching contacts.
2. Enter / encoder click — confirms the highlighted one, replacing @partial with @FullName in your message.
3. Backspace — dismisses the list without touching what you typed.

Sliders

Any focused slider (Control Center brightness, a Settings slider, the Map zoom bar) can't be dragged without touch — instead:

• Q — decrease
• E — increase

Each press moves it proportionally (about 20 presses end-to-end) and persists the new value immediately, the same as releasing a drag.

Map screen panning

While the Map tab is active:

• W — pan north
• A — pan west
• S — pan south
• D — pan east

Each press shifts the view a quarter-screen and reloads tiles/markers as needed.

Keyboard backlight

Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard backlight cycles through three modes (tap to advance):

• Off — always dark
• On — always lit
• Auto (default) — lights up on any keypress, turns off ~3 seconds after the last one

Unlike the T-Deck, this is a plain on/off strip under the keys, not a dimmable brightness curve.

Quick reference

Input	Action
Turn encoder (or Fn tap = NEXT only)	Move focus
Turn, at the loaded edge of a chat	Load more history, keep moving — only exits the list at the true oldest/newest message
Click encoder (or Enter)	Select / confirm
Hold encoder ~1s (or hold Backspace ~1s)	Back
Fn + turn (main tab)	Switch tabs
Fn + turn (page/chat)	Scroll
Fn tap alone	Next field (in a chat: jump to newest message + focus the text box)
Hold Shift + letter	Momentary uppercase
Fn + Shift (editing a field)	Toggle Caps Lock
Fn + Shift (not editing a field)	Nothing
Fn + Backspace (anywhere)	Jump to Home
Fn + Space	Enter accent picker
@ + letters (composer)	Auto-focuses the mention list — no Fn+Space needed
Enter	Select / send / message action menu
Backspace (tap)	Delete / in a chat: jump to first unread message, or newest if none
Backspace (hold 1s)	Back, or unlock if locked
Space (tap)	Space
Space (double-tap)	Switch keyboard language
Space (hold 1s)	Lock screen
Q / E (slider focused)	Decrease / increase
W / A / S / D (Map tab)	Pan map north/west/south/east