[Bug]: pressing ctrl in iterm2 breaks ctrl-r search/inserts blank character

[keysmashes]

What did you expect to happen?

When I hit ctrl-r (using Fish), I get the Atuin UI – but if I hit ctrl there (e.g. as part of pressing ctrl-o), I get a weird character inserted into the search, and all the results disappear. I expected nothing to happen, since nothing usually happens when you press the control key on its own.

#2256 feels maybe related... I'm using iTerm2, but my profile does not have CSI u enabled. I also don't notice any weird side-effects after exiting Atuin.

I did notice that, when Atuin's search is open, "Report All Keys as Escape Codes" gets enabled under the iTerm2 Terminal State menu – disabling that manually seems to temporarily fix the problem. It gets reset as soon as I close/reopen Atuin though.

What happened?

When I hit ctrl (or shift or alt/meta/option) at the Atuin search prompt, the cursor moves one character to the right, the command preview at the bottom of the screen disappears, and the search results go completely blank:

Atuin doctor output

{
  "atuin": {
    "version": "18.11.0",
    "commit": "NO_GIT",
    "sync": {
      "cloud": true,
      "records": true,
      "auto_sync": true,
      "last_sync": "2026-01-19 14:07:40.062975 +00:00:00"
    },
    "sqlite_version": "3.46.0"
  },
  "shell": {
    "name": "fish",
    "default": "zsh",
    "plugins": [
      "atuin"
    ],
    "preexec": "built-in"
  },
  "system": {
    "os": "Darwin",
    "arch": "arm64",
    "version": "26.2",
    "disks": [
      {
        "name": "Macintosh HD",
        "filesystem": "apfs"
      },
      {
        "name": "Macintosh HD",
        "filesystem": "apfs"
      },
      {
        "name": "Deskflow",
        "filesystem": "hfs"
      }
    ]
  }
}

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