Who else can’t type a single text message without at least one typo? Who else out there Besides that have a hard time correcting these typos because it takes at least five attempts to hold and drag the cursor to the exact space you want, right between these two lowercase letters?
My friends, today our struggle is over.
It turns out that there is an easier and infinitely less irritating way to edit your texts: using the iPhone keyboard as a trackpad.
This feature was only available on older Apple products with 3D Touch capability (). It now works on any Apple device running iOS 12 or higher.
Let us show you how it works, will you?
You made a typo in a text you’d like to edit. First, move your finger to the space bar. Touch and hold until all keys are blank, as you will see in the image below.
Blank keys indicate that you are in trackpad mode
While holding, you can now move your finger at the bottom of the screen to direct the cursor where you want, without your finger obstructing your view of the cursor.
As our senior editor Stan Schroeder when iOS 12 was released:
“It’s even more useful. Enabled, in keyboard trackpad mode, you can select a word by pressing it deeply; press more to select the entire paragraph. And on iOS 12, you can do something similar without 3D Touch. Touch and hold the spacebar to enter keyboard trackpad mode. Then tap anywhere on the keyboard with another finger (don’t touch and hold, just touch and release) to enter text selection mode. Now move your thumb up and down to select the text.
“Check out the two variants of the feature in the video below.
“This is especially useful on the iPad, which, for some reason, does not have 3D Touch in any of its variants. If for some reason you haven’t updated your iPad to iOS 12, you can still access the feature in a slightly different way: Tap with two fingers anywhere on the keyboard to enter trackpad mode, then move a finger (while holding pressed the other) to move the cursor.
“The new version of the feature is also great for owners of 3D Touch-less iPhones and sixth-generation iPod Touch, who had no way of accessing it until the release of iOS 12.”