Speed Up Text Editing With iPhone's Hidden Trackpad

[techfreak23]

It was better when the iPhone still had 3D Touch. You didn't have to use a second finger for text selection and it worked much better. Now I only ever use it to scroll back through text.

 

[svish]

Have been using this for some time now. Very useful

 

[Lampekap]

Editing a url was way easier on earlier iOS versions by just dropping the cursor.

 

[coolfactor]

pressing and holding the spacebar and then trying to drag around with one finger while tapping with another finger to select doesn’t exactly feel “easy”. In general I find iOS text selection quite frustrating and fiddly and seems to only have gotten worse over time. Can’t figure out how this was all somehow easier on a 3.5” screen than a 6” one. 🤷‍♂️

It did actually work more reliably in earlier versions of iOS (and the earliest iPhone OS). At one point, they dropped the "loupe" effect, which was super frustrating, and it has since gotten better, but not quite to the point that the early versions had. Nothing to do with screen size. The functionality actually changed. It's pretty good again, but not perfect.

 

[coolfactor]

I just want the ability to quickly bang out some typing without accidentally inserting periods between every word.

Are you referring to the keyboard adding a period after a double-space? You can turn off that feature in Settings.

 

[Col4bin]

Hard to tell due to the period location on the keyboard but it's entirely possible!

 

[FineWoven]

Really digging these little periodic knowledge nugget drops lately. Each one has been at least partially helpful in showing me something new or a different way to do something I did know.

 

[Kettil]

They changed the functionality around the same time they got rid of all the skeuomorphic designs so the magnifying/editing became slightly different. Copy/Paste became harder as it is now more difficult to tap to position the cursor in the correct place. Difficult to explain but believe me it was easier before….

What I usually do is double-tap-and-drag from a word until the end of desired selection, then I’ll fix with the magnifier if needed.

Jumping between lines can be twitchy at times. Dragging downwards seems to get rid of the magnifying glass, becoming an easily placable moving cursor.

I started on an iPhone 2G and generally rarely experience issues, but it’s anecdotal of course. I do tend to miss skeumorphism, though.

 

[MacAddict1978]

I just want to be able to resize the keyboard after almost 2 decades..... you know, like every phone had allowed that was not iPhone since the beginning of touch screen keyboards.

Apple does not even allowed third party keyboards to offer this. I would likely need to cursor far less often. Just saying.

And if anyone brings up the accessibility options - nope - not the same and that is a mess.