So mad! They removed a feature I used daily!

[stevemiller]

Two fingers used to quickly select an entire block of text. Now you have to go through a fiddly process of manipulating handles, which itself seems harder to use than before.

I used it all the time when cutting and pasting quotes!

It especially pisses me off that they removed it just so they could make it a 3D Touch feature. Hey Apple, why not let your new phones stand on their own merits rather than artificially removing functionality from existing devices to make the new ones seem better?

 

[lagwagon]

Two fingers used to quickly select an entire block of text. Now you have to go through a fiddly process of manipulating handles, which itself seems harder to use than before.

I used it all the time when cutting and pasting quotes!

It especially pisses me off that they removed it just so they could make it a 3D Touch feature. Hey Apple, why not let your new phones stand on their own merits rather than artificially removing functionality from existing devices to make the new ones seem better?

Two finger trackpad was never a feature on iPhones (except the very first iOS 9 beta) it's iPad only and 3D Touch for iPhone.

 

[C DM]

Two finger trackpad was never a feature on iPhones (except the very first iOS 9 beta) it's iPad only and 3D Touch for iPhone.

I believe it's more about this functionality that has been there for a while: http://osxdaily.com/2014/06/21/select-paragraph-text-easy-ios-tap/

Two fingers used to quickly select an entire block of text. Now you have to go through a fiddly process of manipulating handles, which itself seems harder to use than before.

I used it all the time when cutting and pasting quotes!

It especially pisses me off that they removed it just so they could make it a 3D Touch feature. Hey Apple, why not let your new phones stand on their own merits rather than artificially removing functionality from existing devices to make the new ones seem better?

Sounds like hold and drag is what's still available for that kind of thing.

 

[stevemiller]

Sounds like hold and drag is what's still available for that kind of thing.

Yup which is what I have to do but it's not nearly as convenient. It really annoys me that they removed the feature for no reason I can think of other than to artificially create a point of upswell.

Sounds like hold and drag is what's still available for that kind of thing.

Two finger trackpad was never a feature on iPhones (except the very first iOS 9 beta) it's iPad only and 3D Touch for iPhone.

As C DM said, I'm not referring to the new feature (although it also sucks that they withheld it) but rather the feature that's been available for years to quickly select blocks of text. Useful for copying quotes, URLs and other things. And the manual dragging of handles is a complete headache by comarison. I'm not lying when I say I used it daily.

 

[bandofbrothers]

You never know if you send this as Feedback to  they may listen.

 

[Chundles]

Holy crap! I didn't know about this, I'd have totally used this every day. I hated using those stupid handles.

 

[stevemiller]

You never know if you send this as Feedback to  they may listen.

Oh I did immediately. And I posted about it here in hopes that i can motive others who appreciated the feature to do the same!

It's seriously enough to make me consider returning to ios8 while I still can.

 

[divergirl]

OH MY GOD I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE THEN. I used this feature every single day and when I updated to iOS 9 I noticed it was missing immediately and its absence has been driving me c r a z y. I don't know what to do, how can I quickly select long blocks of text now? I've used it to select and cut entire paragraphs that were so long they trailed off the screen, when I didn't want to select all the text. Now what do I do? Hold and drag is not exactly a viable option here. Ugh.

 

[C DM]

OH MY GOD I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE THEN. I used this feature every single day and when I updated to iOS 9 I noticed it was missing immediately and its absence has been driving me c r a z y. I don't know what to do, how can I quickly select long blocks of text now? I've used it to select and cut entire paragraphs that were so long they trailed off the screen, when I didn't want to select all the text. Now what do I do? Hold and drag is not exactly a viable option here. Ugh.

i think if you hold at the beginning of a paragraph and start dragging down after a little bit it will realize what you are doing and will select the whole paragraph.

 

[stevemiller]

i think if you hold at the beginning of a paragraph and start dragging down after a little bit it will realize what you are doing and will select the whole paragraph.

Tested and while it kinda works, I really miss the ease of the two finger tap on a block of text. It's a case of while you can still do it, it was far faster and easier before. And it doesn't even appear that they have two finger tap doing something else. They've just removed the feature for no good reason (except maybe to up sell the 6s)

Edit:

I don't know if it's to apple's credit or detriment, but I tried out a 6s in store and there doesn't seem to be any equivalent force touch functionality for this feature, so at least it's not an up sell, they literally just omitted this functionality!

 

[cynics]

Double tap and hold your finger on the second tap? Or am I misunderstanding?

 

[stevemiller]

Double tap and hold your finger on the second tap? Or am I misunderstanding?

Double tap selects a word, and then you can drag around to select a paragraph, yeah. But two finger tap used to select a full paragraph straight away with no fiddling. I just used it very regularly and sorely miss it's absense.

With dragging I'll often lose my selection for some reason. It all just feels very clunky now on ios9. And it was working well enough before so I don't know what they've gained from this.

 

[cynics]

Double tap selects a word, and then you can drag around to select a paragraph, yeah. But two finger tap used to select a full paragraph straight away with no fiddling. I just used it very regularly and sorely miss it's absense.

With dragging I'll often lose my selection for some reason. It all just feels very clunky now on ios9. And it was working well enough before so I don't know what they've gained from this.

I'm probably still not following you. Like in my video above I double tap and hold and it selects an entire section of text.

EDIT: I see iPhone and iPad may function differently. It's very spotty with the iPhone but it can still get it to select a paragraph.

 

[t0mat0]

Maybe it's to make room for other gestures in iOS10? they're being consistent at least - two finger tap is a power user feature, they're pushing text selection with 3D Touch to the masses. Was it removed in iOS9? Or is it available on iOS9 on non-iphone 6s models?

"Turn your keyboard into a trackpad. On iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, press the keyboard until it turns light gray. Move the cursor by dragging around the keyboard. Without lifting your finger, press a little deeper to select a word. Press twice to select a sentence. Press three times to select a paragraph. After pressing, you can drag to select more text."


http://help.apple.com/iphone/9/#/iph3c50ee9e

 

[stevemiller]

I'm probably still not following you. Like in my video above I double tap and hold and it selects an entire section of text.

EDIT: I see iPhone and iPad may function differently. It's very spotty with the iPhone but it can still get it to select a paragraph.

I should clarify the two finger shortcut is primarily for text input fields: text messages, emails, web forms, etc. I compared a device still on ios8 and selecting non-editable text on a website is as your video demonstrates.

 

[t0mat0]

Press down. To get yellow text cursor.
Tap once to select a word from the sentence/ paragraph.
Or
Tap push twice in a row to get sentence highlighted.
Or tap push three times in quick succession to get whole paragraph.

Much more consistently getting text selection this way now.

If you're highlighting text without doing the cursor like copying a paragraph from this thread it's even quicker. Try both.

 

[campyguy]

OP, I shared your frustration a bit during the latest betas and again with the GM/Final build. I've noticed, however, there's a few new selection shortcuts available in iOS 9 for selecting text, including a shortcut to select an entire paragraph in some applications, including Safari. It works most of the time in Safari, providing a web page doesn't somehow block text selection in Mobile Safari (Guardian, Bleacher Report).

I've selected an entire paragraph in Mobile Safari by a Double-tap-and-Hold with one finger in the "white space" directly adjacent (I use US English, so, just to the right of) to the final punctuation mark (period, exclamation mark). The technique doesn't work so well if there's only a small amount of white space between that final punctuation mark and the web page's border.

The selection contains four handles that allow for extending that selection. I have found that I can also move that selection up or down by continuing to hold down the selection finger and moving it in a desired direction.

I'm having more success with this new selection technique than I did with the two-finger method.

In the Notes app, the Double-tap-and-Hold with one finger method yields a single-word selection. By continuing to hold down the selecting finger and dragging I'm able to extend the selection directly - no handles necessary. Cheers!

 

[stoney05]

Yup which is what I have to do but it's not nearly as convenient. It really annoys me that they removed the feature for no reason I can think of other than to artificially create a point of upswell.

Actually it was really easy to activate by accident. If you type on the keyboard even remotely fast it would move the cursor and screw the text up.

 

[divergirl]

Actually it was really easy to activate by accident. If you type on the keyboard even remotely fast it would move the cursor and screw the text up.

Are you sure we're thinking of the same feature? The one detailed in this thread is not activated by the keyboard at all. You would simply tap once on a block of editable text (such as in Notes) with two fingers and it would highlight the entire paragraph in one fell swoop. It was super handy when you wanted to rearrange or cut out paragraphs quickly and easily rather than selecting all the text, and I never activated it on accident.

 

[stevemiller]

OP, I shared your frustration a bit during the latest betas and again with the GM/Final build. I've noticed, however, there's a few new selection shortcuts available in iOS 9 for selecting text, including a shortcut to select an entire paragraph in some applications, including Safari. It works most of the time in Safari, providing a web page doesn't somehow block text selection in Mobile Safari (Guardian, Bleacher Report).

I've selected an entire paragraph in Mobile Safari by a Double-tap-and-Hold with one finger in the "white space" directly adjacent (I use US English, so, just to the right of) to the final punctuation mark (period, exclamation mark). The technique doesn't work so well if there's only a small amount of white space between that final punctuation mark and the web page's border.

The selection contains four handles that allow for extending that selection. I have found that I can also move that selection up or down by continuing to hold down the selection finger and moving it in a desired direction.

I'm having more success with this new selection technique than I did with the two-finger method.

In the Notes app, the Double-tap-and-Hold with one finger method yields a single-word selection. By continuing to hold down the selecting finger and dragging I'm able to extend the selection directly - no handles necessary. Cheers!

Thankyou for these tips!

The first selection tip is new to me and I was very pleased to see it mostly does what I was hoping for with non-editable text! Awesome!

The double tap and drag in notes also works, although its still basically moving handles (just as a part of the initial tap and drag rather than grabbing a blue pole directly). I guess its what we're stuck with, but i still vastly preferred the two finger tap to quickly select a block of text, with no worries of extending the selection and potentially over or under shooting.

Still, those are awesome and helpful tips

 

[aliensporebomb]

OP, I shared your frustration a bit during the latest betas and again with the GM/Final build. I've noticed, however, there's a few new selection shortcuts available in iOS 9 for selecting text, including a shortcut to select an entire paragraph in some applications, including Safari. It works most of the time in Safari, providing a web page doesn't somehow block text selection in Mobile Safari (Guardian, Bleacher Report).

I've selected an entire paragraph in Mobile Safari by a Double-tap-and-Hold with one finger in the "white space" directly adjacent (I use US English, so, just to the right of) to the final punctuation mark (period, exclamation mark). The technique doesn't work so well if there's only a small amount of white space between that final punctuation mark and the web page's border.

The selection contains four handles that allow for extending that selection. I have found that I can also move that selection up or down by continuing to hold down the selection finger and moving it in a desired direction.

I'm having more success with this new selection technique than I did with the two-finger method.

In the Notes app, the Double-tap-and-Hold with one finger method yields a single-word selection. By continuing to hold down the selecting finger and dragging I'm able to extend the selection directly - no handles necessary. Cheers!

The double tap and hold with one finger in the white space near the last punctuation in a paragraph isn't working for me. Do you double tap and hold and then place the finger down or do you place the finger then double tap?

 

[campyguy]

The double tap and hold with one finger in the white space near the last punctuation in a paragraph isn't working for me. Do you double tap and hold and then place the finger down or do you place the finger then double tap?

It's a "tap" followed with a "tap-hold" - maybe that's the way I should have described it initally. There's roughly between 1-1/10 second between the initial tap and the second tap-hold. To "move" that selection, maintain contact on the screen while dragging.

Do keep in mind that, for some reason - likely embedded in a web site's coding - that some web sites prevent text selection, as I'd alluded to in my OP. For instance, I can't select any text on the Bleacher Report mobile website, but I can on most other websites. For the BBC News mobile web site, there's always a bit of a delay before the "selection" shows up - but that web site has always been a bit "slow" to load or respond to actions (tapping, refreshing - those kinds of actions).

There's also a setting in Accessibility in iOS 9 that allows for changing the duration of tapping, if that suits you. I've left these settings at the default. I've also noticed better response with an index finger when compared to a thumb, FWIW.

 

[campyguy]

Thankyou for these tips!

The first selection tip is new to me and I was very pleased to see it mostly does what I was hoping for with non-editable text! Awesome!

The double tap and drag in notes also works, although its still basically moving handles (just as a part of the initial tap and drag rather than grabbing a blue pole directly). I guess its what we're stuck with, but i still vastly preferred the two finger tap to quickly select a block of text, with no worries of extending the selection and potentially over or under shooting.

Still, those are awesome and helpful tips

I'm pleased that I could help to some degree. With all of that documentation that Apple gives us :snark: we're all left to tapping and swiping. Left unchecked, that would turn into throwing and chucking - and I'd hate to see that...

FWIW, I've worked with engineers (I'm one too - civil) and architects - far too often they just get to thinking and muck up something that worked fine in the first place, then complicate it by not telling a soul. I hate that...

 

[stevemiller]

I'm pleased that I could help to some degree. With all of that documentation that Apple gives us :snark: we're all left to tapping and swiping. Left unchecked, that would turn into throwing and chucking - and I'd hate to see that...

FWIW, I've worked with engineers (I'm one too - civil) and architects - far too often they just get to thinking and muck up something that worked fine in the first place, then complicate it by not telling a soul. I hate that...

My fingers are crossed that its omission turns out to be an oversight, as I'm sure there was considerable tinkering in text manipulation code, between adding 3d touch and that iPad two-finger trackpad mode. Anyway, I did my duty and submitted feedback. I suppose all I can do is cross my fingers and hope the project manager gods on iOS deem my request fit!

 

[campyguy]

So, being nearsighted and with big hands I made a bit of a discovery this morning that should simplify this tap-tap/hold thing to get a whole paragraph and, now, a whole web page selected.

Choose a contiguous body of text to select - a paragraph is what I'm alluding to here. Pick one word in that paragraph, then double-tap on it and keep the finger pressed down - the "tap" followed with a "tap-hold" I alluded to earlier. So, a word is selected under that finger - now, slide it to the end of the paragraph, next to the terminating punctuation mark (or white space area, if there's no punctuation mark), and the selection then automatically expands to the entire paragraph! No more fumbling. And, that selection is movable as long as the finger remains pressed to the screen - switching between words and paragraphs as the selection is moved, and leaving handles to expand the selection.

A new option. Using the same selection method I just offered, "move" that selection to the left or right of the paragraph's body - and all of the text and/or images in that section (or whole web page, if it's not sectioned) will get selected.

I was able to copy selections and pasted them into OneNote or Notes - and they retained all the relevant information/data.

As I alluded to earlier, some web pages seem to block selection, like The Verge. Putting a page into Reader Mode may or may not get around that effort to block copying of data.