Oliver Haslam on November 14, 2018, 6:47 am

Here’s How To Make Text Selection On iPad Pro / iPad Easier

Here are a few tips to make text selection on Apple’s iPad, or the new iPad Pro, much easier,whether it is specific words, lines, or paragraphs that need highlighting.

The iPad Pro remains the hot topic of discussion a week after it went on sale last Wednesday, and while there is little doubt that the iPad Pro is a powerhouse of which there is little matching, the world of iOS is generally accepted to still be lagging behind the capabilities of the hardware involved. That doesn’t mean that all of the problems people are coming up with are 100% justified, and developer Steve Troughton-Smith took to Twitter to show people that text selection on an iPad isn’t as bad as they might first feel.

As Troughton-Smith pointed out, selecting lines and paragraphs of text is just a case of double or triple tapping on that text, and with people again complaining of the lack of a trackpad and their belief that it means navigation and text selection on an iPad is sub-par.

Ultimately, selecting text on an iPad goes like this: tap a block of text with two fingers and then scroll with those two fingers just as you would on a trackpad. Users can also double tap with two fingers to select a sentence or triple tap to select a whole paragraph.

Apple also points out that users can turn their iPad’s keyboard into a trackpad of sorts, although it’s not quite the same as a physical trackpad.

Turn your keyboard into a trackpad

Touch and hold the keyboard with two fingers until it turns light gray.

Move the insertion point by dragging around the keyboard.

To select text with drag points, continue holding the keyboard until drag points appear on the insertion point, then move your fingers.

To use the trackpad to move the insertion point, drag the insertion point to a new location before drag points appear.

But hey, it’s better than nothing, right?

(Via: Steve T-S [Twitter])