TextEdit Behaving Odd on Big Sur Update

Hi,

I'm an avid user of TextEdit to keep track of my thoughts and To-Do's through my work day. The result is, I end up with a fairly long text file, but not big on size in terms of storage.

After updating to Big Sur 11.0.1, I'm noticing an odd behaviour.

When every I press [Delete] more than thrice, the scroll bar jumps to the top of the text, i.e. the first line in the text file. This is very frustrating, especially, when you have lot of text and it scrolls all the way to the top.

The only solution I have found is to press [Delete] slowly (may be one character per second) to avoid the scroll bar jumping to the first line of the text file.

Also noticed, it does not happen in a full sentence, but only when when there's a short word and a line break [Enter] above and below the word.

I'm continuing with the same file I had saved on Catalina and never had this issue.

Looks like a bug to me.

[PS: I am a user experience designer, not a developer and only have minimal knowledge of coding. ]

Thanks,
Anish
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  • The cursor position is sometimes reset elsewhere in the file after a paste. Typically, and hopefully by spec, the cursor or insertion point would be positioned at the end of the paste. When the jump happens, 70--80% of the time the cursor jumps to the very start, or to very end of the file. Hypothesizing here---some memory is not being re/initialized, and random data is used for the cursor position. When the value is out of bounds, it is interpreted as fail-safe low: go to position zero, or fail-safe high: go to EOF. Sometimes the value is just some random place within the file! Woe to s/he who was already typing post-paste, thinking s/he knew where s/he was in the file!

    Next, a paste will often create an inviolable amount of white space above the paste. The cursor cannot be positioned into this space, click as you might. When an insertion is made prior to the beginning of the new paste, the Inviolate White Space disappears (and the lower part of the file scrolls up).  The vertical height of the IWS seems to be about 7 lines for me, and is independent of the length of the pasted selection. Before you type to remove the IWS, scroll the page: sometimes the window acts as if an opaque empty frame overlays there and lines of text disappear behind it! (And try to scroll up, i.e. backwards, in a long file after such a paste: the window fights you every inch of way! It does not obey my mouse! It does not obey the arrow keys!) OSX 11.6, TextEdit Version 1.16 (365.2).

    This bug can be triggered pasting from one plain text file to another. It may be more frequent when the paste starts or/and ends at the left and right margins respectively. That is, triple-click to grab a whole paragraph as the selection, then copy.

  • I get the same on Monterey 12.4. Copy/paste from a terminal also causes issues reliably, with a large chunk of whitespace above what you paste in, which seems like maybe a vertical tab or something. deleting this sometimes jumps you to the bottom of the file. Also there are often problems with lines of text actually being displayed over the top of other lines of text.

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1) I've the same issue, using TextEdit v 1.16 (364) in Big Sur, with a jump to the first line of the huge document, after a delete/paste of lines. No cursor is visible.

As workaround, I use the "arrow down" as soon as it jumps to the first line of the document, and cursor moves back to the original page, one line below the position where I was before the delete/paste action. It means the cursor was still in the correct position, but the visible page was the top page, instead of current page.

2) Furthermore, if I try to use cut&paste, and selecting a lot of lines I request TextEdit to execute a scroll down, then my document seems to be corrupted, truncated, even if it isn't, as I can see closing TextEdit and opening document again.

As workaround, I copy&paste only a visible lines, and save changes immediately.

Please Apple, fix it asap !!
+ 1
Running into the same issue. For the first time in a decade I'm looking for something to replace TextEdit. It's a bug that makes taking notes almost unusable. Hoping it's fixed soon.
This frustrated me so much I ended up just downloading a text editor program from the App Store. I've found that CotEditor works in a very similar way to TextEdit, so I've switched to that for the time being.
I'm go glad I found this thread. I thought my computer was going banana and that this problem can't be possible. Good to know I'm not the only one. Hope this problem is fixed soon.
Same here:
  • if I use backspace half way a text-document, the cursor goes to the top of the text-file

  • if I select a bit of text and use cmd+x (cut) the cursor goes to the top of the textfile


Hopefully with the next software update this bug is fixed. TextEdit used to work splendid.
Noticed this same behavior of text edit almost immediately after using my new Macbook Air with Big Sur.
Extremely frustrating. I use it all day to log notes and to update various web pages.
Looking for alternate solution because I can't trust the accuracy of these files.
Apple please fix.
same problem here.

I'm also experiencing some issues with TextEdit in that it refuses to load. Whenever I open the application and select one of my past texts, after 5-6 seconds the app freezes and forces me to force-quit it. I don't know how to fix this. Please help!
I am having the same issue with TextEdit. I submitted a Feedback to Apple describing the problem and I would suggest that anyone else with the TextEdit bug on Big Sur submit one to Apple also. https://www.apple.com/feedback/
Same here. Cursos jumps to the beginning of the text file upon deleting empty line. Arrow Down brigs it to its correct location. Extremely frustrating. How could they mess up something as simple as text editor? Why would you even change it?
Having the same problem. Also, find will not find anything for the 1st and 2nd attempts then it will find on the 3rd try. Very weird but the delete thing is driving me crazy and then to get back to where I was I use find which is also messed up.....

Apple please fix this!
Not sure if this helps, but I'm experiencing the very same issue. It's pretty disorienting; I look forward to the fix.
Just updated to Big Sur 11.1 and now the problem seems fixed :-)
VERY pleased to report I upgraded to Big Sur 11.1 ~1.5 days ago ... and so far, TextEdit is working as it had originally. I still experience a couple of glitches at times, but at least the most frustrating parts are fixed. Thank you.
I've the same issue, very annoying. Please fix it.