In both Lemmy 0.19.4 and Lemmy 0.19.5, you click the magnifying glass to open the search dialog. If you enter a search query and tab out of the field, whatever you typed is cleared. Even if you simply hit <enter> without tabbing out of the query field, the search form is refreshed and it tells you enter a query, as if you had not done so already.

Both versions have this problem with Ungoogled Chromium. The problem does not manifest on Tor Browser.