[lachlan_gray]

On an iPhone if you hold the space bar down the whole keyboard becomes a kind of trackpad which you can use to move the cursor.

Since all the keys disappear, it doesn’t seem like a stretch to add something that works like mouse buttons so you could select text or paste in a specific spot in that “mode”.

Right now it’s so frustrating to do any kind of selecting.

[failuser]

You can use that for selection as well, tap somewhere else on the keyboard. Used to be even better with 3D Touch, you did not have to wait for the long press to register.

[crazygringo]

Holy crap. I've been using the space bar for years to move the cursor, I had no idea you could select with it too. Thank you!

It's even officially documented as well [1]. I wonder if selection was introduced when the spacebar cursor was, or if it was later.

[1] https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/type-with-the-onscree...

[hbn]

I frequently use the selection, but I don't like the implementation of it. Rather than the selection being between the starting "anchor" point and your moving cursor's position, the cursor you're moving around just creates an ever-growing selection that can't be subtracted from. So if you're e.g. selecting across multiple lines and you bring the cursor up to the line above, it'll select everything from the starting point to where the cursor is now, but if you bring it back down it doesn't unselect that text. So if you accidentally select something you didn't want to, the selection is essentially ruined and you need to start over. I have no idea why they implemented it like this.

[whycome]

Super great. Doesn't work on gboard. Why isn't a period and comma a default on these keyboards??

[dieortin]

Selection was introduced at the same time as “space bar cursor”, which is with the introduction of 3D Touch in the iPhone 6s.

Actually, it wasn’t even a “space bar cursor”, as the way of triggering it was with force pressing and not by holding the space bar. It works much better with 3D Touch, as you can move the cursor around and press harder without lifting to start selecting, then release a bit to stop. My iPhone 8 can still do it, and I’m really going to miss it when I upgrade.

[failuser]

I miss 3D Touch too, it was faster than waiting for a long tap.

[jameshart]

Unfortunately this affordance isn’t available when trying to make a selection in noneditable text.

Since often on mobile devices I am responding to comment threads (in slack or gitlab or Jira, or indeed right now on HN, for example) the challenges I have in copy-pasting are often in grabbing text from a prior comment to quote, rather than in selecting my own text.

[failuser]

To be fair you can't drop a caret (the edit cursor) into non-editable text in most desktop applications as well. And that's a missed opportunity there too. I think Chrome got less agreesive in changing your selection to match word bounaries, but it was very annyone for a while. I think you could void it by holding Shift, but that had some other side-effects in some pages.

[dan-robertson]

I think internet explorer did this selection thing at one point years ago. I don’t recall chrome doing it. Firefox used to have a ‘caret browsing’ feature but people didn’t use it so it was eventually removed. So I don’t really think it’s a missed opportunity so much as a feature people didn’t sufficiently love.

[bombela]

Press F6 in firefox for caret browsing.

[savoyard]

That would be F7. The same works in Chrome.

[rjh29]

One cool thing about the Samsung s-pen is it can select any text on the screen (drag while holding the pen button)

[Aerbil313]

Thanks. I don’t know how much RSI I’d be saved from if I knew this years ago. Apple, if you’re listening, you should advertise this better. Ok, maybe not for the new iPhone user, but maybe for a user in his 2nd year or one which does a lot of text input.

[cstrahan]

> You can use that for selection as well, tap somewhere else on the keyboard.

Doesn't appear to work.

What does work is pushing a little harder (i.e. "force touch") with the same finger/thumb that initiated the move-cursor-via-spacebar gesture.

Only problem there is that sometimes the forcetouch doesn't register (no matter how hard you pinch the screen), or is too trigger happy and starts selecting text when you only wanted to move the cursor.

[chatmasta]

What do you mean "tap somewhere else on the Keyboard?" Once I hold down the space bar and then let go, the keyboard disappears. And I just tried some combination of this and got into a frozen state where the keyboard was missing and I had to kill Safari.

EDIT: Oh, I need to use a second finger. Cool.

[_Microft]

As the finger starts close to the bottom edge of the screen, I always struggle with moving the cursor downwards. Is there a trick for that?

[Aerbil313]

You can hold down on every key, not just the space bar.

[c-hendricks]

Except for keys that have alternate accent keys, and I don't think it's possible at all on the other keys when you have swipe typing available.

[teolandon]

I think you can only 3D touch on other keys. If you have one of the newer iPhones without 3D touch you have to long press the spacebar.

[BagelGuy]

OH MY GOD THIS IS AMAZING HOW DID I NOW KNOW THIS