[Bug]: Sidebar constantly reordering while typing

[lucawinterkamp]

What happened?

While typing in a document the documents in the sidebar are constantly reordering.

Distribution version

macOS ARM 64 (Apple Silicon)

App Version

0.26.3

What browsers are you seeing the problem on if you're using web version?

No response

Are you self-hosting?

• Yes

Self-hosting Version

0.26.4

Relevant log output

Anything else?

No response

Is your content generated by AI?

• I confirm that the content I submitted was not generated by AI / merely contained minimal AI edits.

[affine-issue-bot]

Issue Status: 🆕 *Untriaged

*🆕 Untriaged

The team has not yet reviewed the issue. We usually do it within one business day.
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[ibex088]

cannot replicate. It’d be really helpful if you could attach a video.

[JoshuaLetschner]

I have the same issue with local version

[davideconte]

Root cause found

I've been experiencing this bug for a while now and I'm genuinely surprised it hasn't been reported more widely — it makes the sidebar unusable while typing.

After investigating the codebase, the bug is in DocsSearchService.watchRefsFrom() (packages/frontend/core/src/modules/docs-search/services/docs-search.ts).

When you type in a document, the indexer continuously re-scans its content (~1s throttle). Each re-index triggers watchRefsFrom() to re-execute its search query. The results come back from the search engine in a non-deterministic order, and since there's no stabilization on the output, the navigation panel re-renders the linked-doc children in a different order on every keystroke — causing the visible reordering in the sidebar.

const refs = Array.from(
  new Map(nodes.flatMap(...).map(ref => [ref.docId, ref])).values()
  // insertion order = whatever the search engine returned → non-deterministic
);

A distinctUntilChanged guard would suppress re-renders while typing (when no links actually changed), but that alone doesn't solve the ordering problem — we'd still need a stable, meaningful sort order.

Proposed solution

The correct fix IMO is a persistent custom ordering, similar to how Notion handles child pages: the order of linked docs in the sidebar should be explicitly stored and managed (ideally tracked on the backend), so it survives re-indexing, syncs across devices, and lets users drag-to-reorder freely. A purely client-side heuristic (sort by title, by docId, etc.) would be a workaround at best.

I've opened a PR with an interim fix (distinctUntilChanged guard): #14831

Happy to discuss and contribute if the team is aligned on this direction.