Zsh-autocomplete: Autocomplete not working after minimizing and restoring terminal window

[GuyKlaassen]

Based on the following conversation:
https://www.reddit.com/r/zsh/comments/iizw2q/new_zshautocomplete_features_history_menu/g3e7g57/

Describe the bug

I have a hotkey with which I open iTerm2 as the top half of my screen.
If I first launch iTerm2, autocomplete works fine. I can even complete commands, close the window, reopen the window, and it still works.
As soon as I type something and remove it, autocomplete stops working when I close and reopen the iTerm window.

If I (re)source the plugin it closes my iTerm window, when I reopen it (with the hotkey) it works again, until I enter a command and delete it without executing.

I've done some troubleshooting by commenting out all my other plugins (oh-my-zsh) and enabling them one at a time.
It seems to be an issue with https://github.com/zdharma/fast-syntax-highlighting.
So I also tried it with https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting, same issue.

Autocomplete works fine with the syntax-hightlighting plugin disabled.

[marlonrichert]

Thanks for narrowing it down!

What do you mean with "close the window, reopen the window"? I am not familiar with iTerm 2. I just downloaded it and I can't seem to find any way to reopen closed windows. Do you perhaps mean minimize and restore? Or do you mean you hide the app and show it again?

[GuyKlaassen]

I have a (dedicated) hotkey window (https://www.iterm2.com/documentation-hotkey.html) that, according to that documentation, "opens and closes the window". I would say it is more a show/hide, as it doesn't close the session or application.

EDIT: I've created a gif of the behaviour. Every time you see the terminal window (dis)appear I press my hotkey.
https://gfycat.com/emotionalcontentcrayfish

[GuyKlaassen]

After looking into it a bit more, this is not behaviour specific to iTerm2.
If I use the regular macOS terminal it shows the same behaviour when I minimize and restore the terminal to my dock.

[marlonrichert]

@GuyKlaassen Can you please git checkout dev and see if it solves the problem? I pushed in a potential fix on the dev branch.

[GuyKlaassen]

It does solve the problem!
Only thing is that it now "remembers" all the autocomplete suggestions of the last character you removed.
In this case the "w" (top half is iTerm2, bottom half is regular macOS terminal:

[marlonrichert]

@GuyKlaassen That is really strange and I honestly don’t know what to do about it. Might it be a bug in iTerm2?

Does the problem go away when you start typing again? Or does it persist?

[marlonrichert]

Actually, I think what might be happening is that it doesn’t redraw the completions until you start typing again. So, the completion finishes, but it’s not shown until you type the next character.

[GuyKlaassen]

As I showed in the screenshot it also happens in the regular macOS terminal, so it's not related to iTerm2.
And it does go away if I start typing again, it's just that before the change all the suggestions would go away when the prompt was empty. So the bug seems to be fixed (I also got some other errors/bugs while testing, but that might be related to other changes in the dev branch), but this (minor) visual glitch is new behaviour. I suppose it's up to you if you want to do anything about that or not :)

[marlonrichert]

I cannot reproduce this new problem, not in iTerm nor in Terminal. So, it's kind of impossible for me to fix. :)

I will merge the commit to master and then close this issue, since the original problem was solved. If you can find some way for me to reproduce the new problem locally, feel free to open a new issue for it.

[GuyKlaassen]

That's completely fair!
Thanks for the fix 👍

[marlonrichert]

Fix merged to master.