Feature: Support keyboard scrolling to review full session history in TUI #2162
Description
Describe the feature or problem you'd like to solve
Currently, when the AI model produces a long response in the Copilot CLI TUI, users can only see the last screen of output. There is no way to scroll up using keyboard shortcuts (e.g., Page Up / Arrow Up) within the TUI itself to review earlier parts of the response or previous turns in the conversation.
This is especially painful when:
- The model produces long code blocks or analysis that spans multiple screens
- You want to review earlier steps in a multi-turn session without re-running the prompt
- Long tool output (e.g., test results, file diffs) is truncated by the viewport
Proposed solution
Add native keyboard-based scrolling support in the TUI viewport, for example:
- Page Up / Page Down — scroll one screen at a time through session history
- Ctrl+↑ / Ctrl+↓ — scroll line by line
- Or a dedicated scroll mode (similar to tmux copy mode) activated by a shortcut like
Ctrl+B [
Alternatively, expose a /scroll or /pager command that opens the full session output in an interactive pager (e.g., less).
Workarounds currently available (but insufficient)
/copy— copies only the last response to clipboard/share— exports the full session to Markdown/Gist, but requires leaving the TUI- Terminal-native scroll — often intercepted by the TUI and either disabled or broken (see related issue 🐛 Scrolling up one page causes scrollbar to jump to top of terminal session #1587)
Related issues
- 🐛 Scrolling up one page causes scrollbar to jump to top of terminal session #1587 — Scrolling up one page causes scrollbar to jump to top of terminal session
Additional context
This is a common pain point for users working on tasks that produce verbose output (e.g., code review, log analysis, test runs). Native scrolling support would significantly improve the day-to-day usability of the TUI.
- OS: Linux
- Terminal: standard terminal emulator