i was this years old when i got to know this feature : _____

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu...

i thought everyone knew this

Next you'll find the hidden characters 🥲

I

60% of the time it works 100% of the time.

iOS's keyboard is just awful.

@C0D4 those are common, infact i had disabled this whole glide experience, so it took me a twitter post to find this new thing

I think I knew this and then forgot. Let's hope I remember this time.

I know this but I barely ever use it. Do you use it often?

I not only didn't know this - but i actually also have no idea how i would ever have been able to discover it other than by pure chance (like reading about it in this rant).

Somehow, mobile GUIs seems to be all about abscure interfaces you basically have no chance of figuring out on your own. They aren't designed for discovery.

I found out fairly quickly after I got my first iPhone. But like @Oktokolo said, it was by chance by reading a friend’s post on FB about it
(also, how does one go about moving around the cursor of it isn’t with the spacebar?)

@red-knot You can tap on and swipe over the text to move the cursor. That was easy to discover because it mimics mouse behaviour.

Swiftkey had this years ago and it feels like Gboard just adopted it as well (but it might've been 1-2 years already too).

@Oktokolo I don't mind the UI being compact over obvious, powerful tools have been like this since the dawn of industry.

I do however mind how it mixes with the modern attitude of refusing to write a manual - originally adopted based on the false claim that only bad interfaces need manuals.

If my phone's keyboard had a manual I'd read the shit out of it. If the phone had a manual that clearly describes how the power saving feature decides what to kill, I'd be delighted. I can read. I can't guess touch interactions.

is this an iPhone only thing? I use a custom keyboard on Android, so wouldn't know

@lorentz Sure, if they are mentioned in a discoverable manual, such design choices are actually okay. It isn't the sort of feature you could easily stuff into a menu after all...

@lorentz I believe this is what you're looking for.

https://books.apple.com/au/book/...

And exact details for using keyboard trackpad

Who are you so wise in ways I can scroll

@lorentz It always made me wonder, how come there are no "tutorial" apps, which would explain basics of control and let you try them. Even Win95 came with "getting started" for the GUI.

And yeah, we can always kinda figure it out, but non-tech people being forced to use touchphones (family contacts on FB, WhatsApp, etc..) or by banks moving 2FA login to apps.. they're completely lost about how the control works.

@domfoo depends on the keyboard though, on some keyboards you can change to a different keyboard by holding the space bar.

@Oktokolo it's supposed to be easier to get the cursor to the right spot by sliding the space bar instead. In my experience it's still a bit difficult.

@electrineer I tried it and it is probably best to travel long distances by tap on the text and then refine by spacebar swiping.

I wonder whether there could be an actually good-working interface for small mobile devices which just hasn't been invented yet...

It used to be the whole keyboard when Force Touch was still a thing. Then Apple decided to switch to stronger glass, which wiped out that feature. Now it’s just the space bar :/

Doesn't work on AOSP keyboard.