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Comment by adonovan | Hacker News Reader

Same with iPhone. My mind was blown when after years of tapping left-arrow someone showed me what happens when you hold down the space key. Or that dragging the iphone chat message app's background to the left reveals the timestamps of each message.

It's all very clever and elegant and minimal but consumer technology user interfaces seem to be converging on that of a Theremin.

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Same. I just learned that in most apps on iOS/Android if there's something you need to pinch to zoom in/out. Usually a map app.

You can zoom with one finger. Double tap and hold, then move you finger up/down to zoom in/out.

Apparently you've able to do this for 5+ years or something. WTF

Only on Android, not iOS, I think. You've always been able to do this, even longer than you could pinch-zoom. Unfortunately, it seems to be going away—Chrome no longer zooms on double-tap-drag, nor do any of the Samsung apps (Samsung Internet, Photos, etc.).

I have a workaround for you: assistive touch under accessibility allows you to bring up an on-screen two-handle bar which lets you adjust zoom with one hand.

My full workflow for using this is triple click power key to bring up accessibility shortcuts, press assistive touch and then tap on the circle icon to bring up the bar. You can drag it around by dragging the middle and if you drag either bar end it does the “pinch”.

I put smart invert for pseudo dark mode and zoom in the other two accessibility shortcuts to round out the accessibility shortcut menu.

> Only on Android, not iOS

It does work on iOS but seems app-dependent. Works in Apple Maps, doesn't work in Photos.

Bullshit... tries it ... Oh! :-) Thank you!

Says something about discoverability when it seems like I need to RTFM for gestures again.

Is there a manual for these hidden features though? I’d really like to read something exhaustive about available gestures!

See David Pogue's "Missing Manual" series

I so miss the days of the well structured and comprehensive manual. I used to read them end to end. Even if you didn't remember the details you knew what was possible.

So do I, but in entire fairness here that manual for iOS would probably run to three or four thousand pages.

What I really miss is having the time free to peruse a manual like that.

They still write manuals, it's just non-obvious: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/welcome/ios

The specific spacebar trick is even in the manual at https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/iphone/iph3c50f96e/ios

>Touch and hold the Space bar with one finger until the keyboard turns light gray.

>Move the insertion point by dragging around the keyboard.

So the problem is more that OP doesn't read manuals rather than them not being as good as they once were.

I’ve never bought a new iPhone. Is there something included in the box to point people towards the online manuals? I’m making a hopefully safe assumption there wasn’t a manual in the box that GGP ignored.

I just opened my iphone 13 box and there is a paper slip that says "before use, please refer to the user guide <url>" Along with a few of the main safety points printed on the paper itself. When you start the iphone the first thing it makes you do is log in and then click through a series of tips and tricks pages but nothing stops you from clicking next through them without reading. They then put an app on the phone by default called "Tips" which explains all this stuff with images and videos.

At some point you just have to admit that there is realistically nothing more that can be done. Users don't want to read the manual because they can use their phone perfectly fine without it. They might not notice there is a nicer way to move the cursor but it doesn't really matter.

There is a manual and it comes preinstalled as an app out of only around 10 apps on the default screen and yet people still complain about the lack of a manual. I really don't know what they could do other than locking the phone until the user completes a quiz on the manual content.

Thanks for the space bar tip … wow. Turns out it works when long-pressing any key on the keyboard.

yeah the mac, with the not even hand gestures, but almost nods and winks at things, is too stupid. If I'm 20 and want to seem hip, and spend 20 hours a day on my phone, then sure, maybe, I think that's cool.

But for the rest of the world, it's not. My mom can't use an iphone or android phone, because they cater too much to... the young? the rich? tech? geeks?

beats me... and I am a dev of > 30 years, that spends more of my time in front of my computer, than almost anyone I know. I love computers and tech, but am amazed that things have not become easier.

They are harder now then they ever were.

But having said that, Macs are all I've used for the last 10 years, because they seem, overall, better than any other OS I've used.

If you hold down the period key on most keyboards in iOS it'll bring up .com, .org, etc. Saves a little time typing in urls.

TIL about holding the space key!

What left arrow?

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