Hi everyone,
I’ve recently spent some time searching through old topics and discussions on Meta and other Discourse-based forums, and I found that many users over the years have repeatedly raised the same concern:
After posting a reply or closing the composer, Discourse automatically jumps to the very last post in the topic.
For quite a few people—including myself—this behavior is actually disruptive rather than helpful.
Why it’s causing issues
Based on what many users have expressed, the common problems include:
When replying in the middle of a long thread, the composer closes and the view suddenly jumps to the bottom, forcing you to scroll all the way back to continue reading where you were.
If you’re replying while catching up on older messages, this auto-jump breaks the reading flow.
Some users even thought this might be a bug, because the jump happens so quickly that it feels unexpected and unintuitive.
A number of past discussions indicate that people have tried workarounds, scripts, or hacks, but nothing works reliably or officially.
In short, while auto-jumping to the newest post is useful for some users, it’s clearly unwanted for many others depending on their reading habits or workflow.
Feature Request: Please make this behavior optional
From reviewing past threads, it seems that:
There is no built-in setting to disable this auto-jump
There is no official plugin that provides a toggle
Admins and users currently cannot control this behavior at all
So I’d like to request that Discourse provide either:
A user preference, such as:
“After posting or closing the composer, stay at the current position (do not jump to the last post).”
or
A site-wide/admin setting, such as:
“Enable/disable automatic scroll to the latest post after replies.”
This would allow different communities (and individual users) to choose whichever interaction model better fits their reading style. It also aligns with the design philosophy of Discourse, which usually allows customization of reading flow behaviors.
Why an option would benefit everyone
Users who like the auto-jump can keep it as is
Users who dislike it can turn it off
Forum admins can set defaults that match their community’s needs
No one would need to rely on fragile custom JavaScript or browser userscripts
It improves accessibility and reduces sudden movement that may be uncomfortable for some readers
Given how many people have raised this issue over the years, adding a configurable option could significantly improve UX for a large portion of the community.
If I’ve missed an existing setting or plugin, please feel free to point me to it — but based on what I’ve found, it doesn’t seem like such an option currently exists.
Thanks for considering it, and I’d really appreciate any insights from the team or other plugin developers.
tom_eric:pfaffman:Won’t it be confusing for you to post something and then be left dozens of posts above your post with no indication that it’s been posted? Why not just keep reading so you can comment on the rest of the posts if you want to?
Thanks for the explanation! Let me clarify my actual use case, because the current behavior still creates a real problem for me.
Imagine this scenario:I start a discussion thread, go to sleep, and the next day I wake up to find more than a hundred replies. Many of them are interesting, and I want to reply to some of them while reading through the thread.
Here’s the issue:
When I read a reply somewhere in the middle of the topic and respond to it, after I send my reply Discourse immediately jumps all the way to the very bottom of the topic.But the conversation is not real-time — people might not reply again until hours later. I don’t need to be taken to the latest post. I just want to continue reading the rest of the replies in order.
What I really need is simply:
- A clear indication that my reply was successfully posted
- Without losing my current reading position
- So I can naturally continue reading the next replies in sequence
Right now, after the forced auto-jump, I have to manually scroll back and try to remember where I was, which is tedious and breaks the reading flow.
This is why an option to stay at the current scroll position after posting would be extremely helpful.The auto-jump is useful for some workflows, but in cases like mine, it just gets in the way.
Discuss this on our forum.