[fauigerzigerk]

>I don't want any text to be selectable. I don't want pull to refresh on every page. I don't want the left-swipe to take me to the previous page.

Strange. This inability to select any text has always felt like one of the most hostile things developers could ever do. It feels like pure vandalism.

Another thing that causes massive productivity degradation is not being able to keep multiple pages open so you can come back to some state. I cannot imagine how anyone could possibly use these apps for any serious work.

The UX of almost all native mobile apps is absolute crap. But it's not their nativeness that makes them crap. I'm not complaining about the idea of operating systems offering non-portable but high performance UI primitives that make use of OS facilities.

Many native desktop apps don't have these UX issues (at least not all of them at the same time). It's the mobile UX patterns, conventions and native UI frameworks that are causing this catastrophic state of affairs.

[whstl]

Inability to select text is a pain in the ass when you're midway through learning the language and only wants to translate certain parts. In native apps it's understood (app makers don't really give a shit about me), but when it's in websites it's like a slap in the face :)

[hombre_fatal]

Yeah, the app model of one page open at a time ever is such bad UX. Huge regression from the web. Funnily enough you get around it on an app like Reddit by opening pages in the web browser.

[herrvogel-]

Every time I try to select a single word in a WhatsApp message I surprised for a second. It’s so strange that most apps that have text as their fundamental content don’t allow you to do this.

[umbra07]

> Strange. This inability to select any text has always felt like one of the most hostile things developers could ever do. It feels like pure vandalism.

Use Circle to Search? Native capability that works on every single app, and is close to perfect (with the exception of handling text at the very bottom/top of your screen that's covered by your navbar/Google logo).

[criddell]

On modern mobile and desktop operating systems, you can always copy that portion of the screen to the clipboard and it will recognize the text so you can paste it anywhere.

[ycombinator_acc]

No you can't.

Even if you could (which you can't, at least on my, modern, phone), it would be a workaround, not a solution.

A solution would be allowing free selection like in the browser or, better yet, ditching "native" apps for web apps, as the person above suggested. As a bonus, this "exodus" will force browser makers to iron out any UX issues very quickly.

[mattl]

I’ve noticed that apps can tell when you’re taking a screenshot and often will pop up a little message first which appears in the screenshot.

Reddit on iOS was one that did it.

[tshaddox]

Also, if my memory serves, native MacOS apps by default support selecting most text that isn’t part of a clickable element like a button.

[OrangeMusic]

No, that's absolutely not the case, and it would be very odd and disturbing.

[golvok]

I think it's an accessibility option that also makes navigating with the tab key more useful.