Comment by MBCook | Hacker News Reader

Comment by MBCook | Hacker News Reader

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It's one of the standard iOS gestures and works nearly everywhere.

iOS is FULL of handy little things like that, but I'm not sure many of them are ever explained. You just have to stumble across it or read about it somewhere like reviews of the new versions of iOS.

Did you know in mail (and many other places) you can swipe table rows left or right for quick actions? Marco Arment recently changed Overcast to make features more visible because it seems many people, including power users, weren't even aware that gesture existed.

Now that I have an iPhone 7 re force-touch stuff can be very handy. But I forget it exists for weeks on end because I went so many years without it and it's totally hidden.

> Marco Arment recently changed Overcast to make features more visible because it seems many people, including power users, weren't even aware that gesture existed.

So that's what that was all about. I noticed the changes because for me they reduced the usability of Overcast massively. The features I used the most were resuming the current podcast, playing a different podcast, and setting a sleep timer. All of these things now take double the taps they did before, with much smaller controls that are hard to hit in the car. You tap a podcast and some miscellaneous options jump out. Ugh, when I tap a podcast I want it to open and start playing! The sleep timer durations move around, so it takes 7 presses and some squinting to set a 25-minute timer. By this time my retinas are seared because the UI for that is white even in night mode.

I know full well about swiping in tables and I'd love the old behaviour to be an option. The author could probably make some good coin by making it available as an IAP.

Another nice gesture that's lesser known is hold down on the left side of the screen in any app then drag to the right to open the app switcher.

That's one of the new force press gestures that came around in the 6S. It really is useful, but I'm having trouble getting over almost 10 years of muscle memory that no such gesture existed.

Plus it's a bit fiddly.

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