Issue: `toolModalStateChanged` event not triggered on Shift+click selection in PS 26.6.0+

Photoshop
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1

Hi everyone,

In Photoshop version 26.6.0 and later, the toolModalStateChanged event is not triggered when selecting multiple artboards using Shift + click with the mouse.

This action works as expected in earlier versions, like 26.2.0, where the event was triggered correctly (using the Alchemist plugin to monitor events). Our plugin depends on this event to detect such selection changes and update the UI accordingly. Without it, the plugin becomes unresponsive to this type of user interaction.

Is this a known issue or a behavior change?
And is there any alternative way to detect Shift + click artboard selection in the newer versions?

Thanks!

2

I don’t see a reason why PS should go into modal state when selecting layers.

I would like to PS to give me proper events on document/layer/path/channel selection changes. Now we have only workarounds.

3

Thanks Jarda, that makes sense.

We also don’t rely on toolModalStateChanged by design; it just happened to be the only event that was triggered during Shift + click canvas selections in earlier versions. Ideally, we’d prefer to use a proper select or selectionChanged event exposed through the API.

Interestingly, the select event is triggered when artboards are selected from the Layers panel using Shift + click, but not when the same selection is made directly on the canvas. To confirm, I also used:

photoshop.action.addNotificationListener(["all"], eventHandler);

and verified that no event is triggered when selecting artboards via canvas interaction.

So it seems like there’s a disconnect between canvas-based selection and the event system.

Is there a recommended workaround to reliably detect canvas-based artboard selections?