Yes, that’s by design. You can now quickly move into and out of the reader while navigating tabs via the keyboard. Previously focus got stuck in the reader.

Hmm...I use Esc for may things in the reader (dismissing the search dialog, dismissing an annotation popup, etc). If Esc now focuses the tab bar, that would be quite disruptive for me (and I presume some others as well).

I typically use Ctrl+tab to navigate between tabs. That doesn't prevent me from use the arrow keys or page up/down to navigate the PDF. However, the new behavior does, as it requires one to click inside the PDF before the arrow keys or page up/down to work.

Perhaps I'm missing something here? How does one get focus back in the reader after hitting Esc?

How does one get focus back in the reader after hitting Esc?

Press Enter. But see above re: popups/etc.

It lets normal, visible keyboard focus work properly.

Before, you could Shift-Tab to the tab bar from the library view, use left/right arrow keys to move between tabs, and press Enter or Tab to move focus to the reader content or toolbar, and keyboard focus would be stuck there, without the ability to Shift-Tab back to the tab bar, including the open-tabs menu and sync button. That's obviously a bug.

[Your favorite tab-switching key combo] still works fine and auto-focuses the reader content. This is useful if you 1) don't use those, 2) want to access the open-tabs menu or sync button, 3) want to move between tabs without selecting them (Cmd/Ctrl-left/right), 4) want tab titles read to you in your screen reader, or 5) just expect to be able to go back to the library view the way you came.

Perhaps this is an issue with my setup (dark mode on Linux with Cinnamon DE)?

It is the same with the light color scheme on Ubuntu with GNOME.

Thank you!