Who else can’t type a single text message without at least one typo in it? Who else is there? also has a hard time fixing said typos because it takes at least five tries to hold the cursor and drag it to the exact space you want, right between those two lowercase letters?
My friends, our battle ends today.
Apparently there is an easier, infinitely less annoying way to edit your texts: by using your iPhone keyboard as a trackpad.
This feature was previously only available on older Apple products with 3D Touch capability (). It now works on any Apple device with iOS 12 or higher.
Let’s show you how it works, shall we?
You have a typo in a text you want to edit. First, bring your finger to the space bar. Tap and hold until all keys are empty as shown in the image below.
Blank keys indicate that you are in trackpad mode
While holding, you can now slide your finger across the bottom of your screen to point the cursor wherever you want, without your finger is obstructing your view of the cursor.
As our editor-in-chief Stan Schroeder when iOS 12 was released:
It gets even more useful. In keyboard trackpad mode, you can select a word by deep pressing on it; press deeper to select the entire paragraph. And on iOS 12 you can do something similar without 3D Touch. Tap and hold the Spacebar to enter keyboard trackpad mode, then tap anywhere on the keyboard with another finger (no tap and hold, just tap and release) to enter text selection mode, now move thumb up and down to select text.
Check out both variations of the feature in the video below.
This is especially useful on the iPad, which for some reason doesn’t have 3D Touch in any of its variants. If for whatever reason you haven’t updated your iPad to iOS 12, you can still access the feature in a slightly different shape: tap anywhere on the keyboard with two fingers to enter trackpad mode, then move one finger (while still holding the other) to move the cursor.
“The new version of the feature is also great for owners of 3D Touch-less iPhones and the sixth-generation iPod Touch, who didn’t have access to it until iOS 12 hit the market.”