How To Use IOS 13’s Text Editing Gestures On IPhone And IPad
Jahed Stetter
Navigating and editing text is an essential part of any operating system, and with iOS 13, Apple has made some significant changes. Some things remain the same when working with text, but there are many updates to moving the cursor, scrolling, and selecting, cutting, copying, pasting, undoing, and redoing text.
Apple streamlined the text editing system to make it easier and quicker to use on an iPhone. So the changes to editing text in iOS 13 go relatively deep. Apple even ditched the magnifying glass that'd appear when moving the cursor, something that has been around since the very first iPhone.
Text selection is also faster, allowing you to highlight text with either a swipe or a few taps, in addition to the drag handles that previous versions of iOS relied on. Also, while not explicitly geared toward text, the scroll bar is now draggable. So you can quickly move to any point in a document in one step instead of having to swipe over and over.
While some of the things below also apply to selectable, non-editable text, there will be some differences. We're just focusing on the editing side of things. If you're only interested in certain aspects, you can jump to a section: Moving the Cursor Selecting & Moving Text Editing Text Scrolling Through Documents.
The most significant change to cursor movement comes with the removal of the tap-and-hold method to bring up the magnifying glass. In iOS 13, the cursor becomes draggable. Now, rather than tapping, holding, and waiting for the magnifying glass to show up, you can just grab the cursor and move it right where you want it. After grabbing the cursor, it will hover right above your finger, so you can still see and drop it precisely where you want to.
It's easily the most disruptive change in iOS 13 and will require some users to change a habit that's been built up for the past decade. Once your muscle memory switches to the new system, however, moving around the text cursor should become quicker since there's no waiting on the magnifying glass.
The tap method also received a small tweak in iOS 13. In prior versions, after tapping a word to move the cursor, a second tap will only open the edit menu. Plus, if you tap to put the cursor inside of a word after the first tap, it would only move the cursor to the beginning or end, not in the middle anywhere.
In iOS 13, if you tap to go to a word, then tap in the same spot, the edit menu will appear. And if you tap that word the second time in the middle somewhere, it'll act like in iOS 12 where the cursor jumps to the beginning or end of the word. However, long-press that second time and the cursor will move to the place within the word that you touched. In some cases, the menu may appear, other times not.
In iOS 13, the double-tap method has been updated to include triple and quadruple taps. So you can do more with multiple taps than just select a word. Tapping to highlight now includes the following options:
As mentioned above, the "long-press a word and slide" action works similarly, but you must wait for haptic feedback to know that it's ready to select more text. If you select a word without getting the haptic feedback, you'll just drag the whole selector box over to another word or set of characters.
Also worth mentioning, whenever you tap on a word, then tap in the middle of it somewhere, the cursor will jump there, and the edit menu will appear with options to Select, Select All, Paste, Insert Drawing, BIU, and Indentation.
In previous versions of iOS, getting to the Cut, Copy, and Paste commands is primarily done using the contextual edit menu that appears when text or numbers are selected, as seen above. It's not the fastest way, but it's better than the options for Undo and Redo. Introduced almost a decade ago, the "Shake to Undo" and "Redo" feature may be responsible for its fair share of broken iPhone screens.
To get around those downfalls, some apps added buttons to their UI for oft-used features, and Apple even added them to the top of the onscreen keyboard on the iPad. However, both have shortcomings in that they aren't available across iOS and are usually only shown when editing text.
In iOS 13, Apple has added some new three-finger gestures to make accessing these commands much faster across all of the system. Much like keyboard shortcuts, learning these gestures will make manipulating text much quicker and fluid. To get started, select some text, then do the following:
When you perform each gesture, a small bubble will appear at the top of the screen showing which command was executed. These gestures tend to work better on larger iPhone models. If you're on an iPhone with a smaller screen (the iPhone SE, in particular), you can also do a three-finger tap to open a menu at the top of the screen with all five commands available. But you can also use that option if the swipe gestures are too hard to remember.
The iPhone has always done a great job providing a fast and smooth scrolling experience. Flicking a webpage then watching it scroll and slowly come to a stop was one of those "wow" moments back when the iPhone first came out. The experience has aged well for the most part, but it can be a little frustrating when scrolling through long documents.
For iOS 12 and under, you can get back to the top by tapping the status bar, but getting to a specific point is often an exercise in frustration. Usually, you would start to flick over and over, only to scroll past where you wanted to go since things are moving so fast.
In iOS 13, Apple has finally added the ability to grab and move the scroll bar. To do it, scroll a bit to show the scroll bar on the right side of the screen, then long press on it. You'll feel a haptic tap and the scroll bar will get thicker. Now, just move it up and down the side of the screen to scroll to any point. No more flicking!
Working with editable text documents in iOS 13 is going to take some getting used to for people who have been using iOS for several years. While many of the old ways of doing things are sticking around, functions like moving the cursor are changing concepts that have been there since the iPhone was first unveiled.
Just updated your iPhone? You'll find new features for Podcasts, News, Books, and TV, as well as important security improvements and fresh wallpapers. Find out what's new and changed on your iPhone with the iOS 17.5 update.
How do I get my normal cursor controls BACK?! I don't WANT these idiotic new controls, I want to be able to tap-and-hold and see the magnifying glass of what's under my finger. How the hell are you supposed to place your cursor IF YOU CAN'T SEE WHAT'S UNDER YOUR DAMN FINGER?!! There must be a setting to turn that back on, but I cannot find it anywhere. Do you know where it is?
I miss it he magnifying glass too. Holding down on the space bar does makes it easy to see the positioning of the cursor and I have found that Once you have text selected if you drag your finger below it will extend the area but offset from where your finger is so you can see the edge of the selected area. Now it does a poor job of this when you are trying to reposition the beginning of a selected area and this is where I really miss that magnifying loupe.
editing text is the single, most frequent activity I perform on my phone. because it's very difficult to type on a phone and the device has zero intelligence to autocorrect e.g. I type "tgat" every time but the phone's too stupid to guess I mean "that" -- so I have to go fix it
with the magnification loupe I could see where I needed to insert the cursor. now they've taken that feature and I can't see where the cursor is because my finger is on top of it. it's the stupidest, most aggravating experience I've had with iPhone
The tap and move cursor isn't intuitive and rarely works . It's awful..Using Notes has become a nightmare. Editing around links is impossible... the links keep opening when I just want to edit around them.
Thanks for a great article. It's challenging to try to put into words some of these actions, with all their combined nuances. Given that many owners of iPhones are Boomers like me, I'm questioning how much sense it makes to keep changing the user interface, especially massive changes without, as another user mentioned, allowing an option to keep elements of the old interface at least temporarily. I am learning as I get older , it's not that I CAN'T be flexible and adjust to changes, it's just that I don't usually WANT to. If it's really for a good cause, I'll make the adaptations. But if it's not really necessary and doesn't make large appreciable differences, I'd rather keep what I'm accustomed to. It's much more efficient in the long run. Honestly, I probably won't remember all the nuanced movements anyway!
Another thing I'm noticing , seemingly just recently with iOS 13, is that when I place the i text insertion point within some existing editable text, iOS keeps wanting to capitalize the first letter I type. This used to only happen when I positioned the cursor after a period. Now it seems it's happening nearly every time I do it.
Apple added quite a few new text-editing gestures to the iPhone and iPad with iOS 13. These make it faster to select text, copy and paste, and move the text-entry cursor around. Apple's keyboard now supports swipe-to-type, too.
You can now more quickly select words, sentences, and paragraphs with a few taps. These shortcuts should work anywhere you can edit text in iOS 13, but they seemed a bit flaky in apps like Evernote for us. Maybe app developers just need to release a few updates.
This is how text selection has always worked on iOS. But, with the arrival of iOS 13, Apple has improved it so that you don't need to be as precise when selecting text. It's much more forgiving, and you don't have to tap as precisely.
Moving the cursor works the way it always did. But, just like dragging to select text, it's easier and more forgiving than ever. You can now tap and hold the cursor until it gets bigger, and then move it around the screen and drop it wherever you like.
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