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Comment by ktm5j | Hacker News Reader

Holy crow, the feature where you can move the cursor by swiping back and forth on the spacebar is AMAZING. Seriously, I have always struggled with moving the cursor in text on either android or ios. This is great!

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Yes, it's amazing. And this also works on the default Android/iOS keyboards too.

oh.. really? Now I feel silly haha

Yeah its super useful. Although the detection of it is not perfect. Sometimes you end up inserting a space (:

I feel silly too now. I wonder what other lovely features i also don't yet know about

... Edit: Oh this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25671086

One can delete-left, by starting swiping from the delete button

It does not work on the default iOS keyboard. You can't just slide your finger around the spacebar, you have to long press on the keyboard and hope you don't trigger the alternate character popup instead. Then while you're moving the cursor around, half the time it will just start selecting text. Moving the cursor sucks on iOS.

I'm an android guy, but force touch moving cursor on iOS works very fine. Better than spacebar sliding. Just press harder on on keyboard and it'll hide keys and let you desk the cursor around, mouse style.

All in production iPhones don't have force touch.

I also thought it worked better than Android on the SE 1.

I don't have any device without it on hand, but since force touch is basically a glorified longtap, I guess some form of longtap will do the trick.

Yes, they have "haptic touch", which means long press. Force touch specifically requires you to apply more pressure than a normal touch.

https://imgur.com/agqXWWJ

That's me pasting your comment into a reply box and then using my iPhone 8 to move the cursor around. Once I start moving the cursor all I'm doing is moving it, nothing else. You can see that it starts selecting text randomly twice. It actually took me longer to trigger it this time than usual.

I think it happens when I moved to the top of the text and then make a downward motion. It's really, really annoying on a regular basis.

Likely you have a defective unit, which somehow breaks the force touch input.

No, I've been through 3 iPhones now and they all did it.

Thank you! I've frequently read articles and forum posts describing the feature like the parent does, and I've never succeeded in getting it to work. I just assumed it wasn't supported on my old phone. Now I know.

Hm, tried it, but it doesn't seem to work that way on the AOSP keyboard (LineageOS/Android9 here). Either hits '.' or the language change button, or I get the "select keyboard layout" pop up due to a long press on space.

Will check out OpenBoard, because this sounds like a great feature.

On lineageos there's an option somewhere in the system settings to make the volume buttons move the cursor when the keyboard is open.

Add Comment the_pwner224 3 hours ago | parent | on: OpenBoard – FOSS Keyboard for Android which respec...

On lineageos there's an option somewhere in the system settings to make the volume buttons move t andhe cursor when the keyboard is open.

Oops I accidentally submitted that, when trying out the keyboard features (i copied some random text and started soft kbd space sweeping to move the cursor. Didn't notice i apparently submitted the text too)

Thanks for the pointer, though I already know about it. But then I can't change the volume when in a text input field - with headphones and very dynamic music I found this to be an issue.

Not only that. You can also erase text by swiping left starting from the delete button.

Neat!

On iOS hold down the space bar and it becomes a mouse cursor.

On iPad, use 2 fingers on the keyboard and the keyboard becomes a touchpad.

I've been using OpenBoard for over a year and I didn't know this!

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