TiPb Asks: What is your favorite iPhone and iPad gesture or shortcut?
What is your favorite iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad gesture or shortcut? iOS 4.3 gives the iPad some new ones like ability to swipe between apps but there are already . Pinch to zoom has always gotten a lot of attention, keyboard shortcuts are real time savers, two finger scrolling in form fields is sweet, and the rotor in VoiceOver mode is very cool, but I think that the one I most appreciate is the single finger tap on the status bar to jump back to the the top of any page (I wish my Mac had that!)
How about you? What's your favorite gesture or shortcut? And do you have a least favorite?
Senior Editor at iMore and a practicing psychotherapist specializing in stress and anxiety. She speaks everywhere from conferences to corporations, and co-hosts of the iMore show and ZEN and TECH podcasts.
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The "one finger" I hate Android gesture.
^ :)
Lol. Yup, that one ;)
I think the multitasking, or if you mean on screen gestures it has to be the pinch to zoom and zoom out
Hey thanks. I did not know about the one finger on the status bar. This is my new favorite
I'm finding the swipe between apps thing rather random - it's never clear what app is left/right of you, and it seems to change often!
Is there a gesture to quickly scroll down the page? That's something that I really like about my incredible and will miss when I get and iphone 4.
No. You can create a bookmarklet that will do it, but unless the page is really long it's more hassle than it's worth.
Code for those curious:
javascript:scroll(0,document.getElementsByTagName(%22body%22)%5B0%5D.scrollHeight);
Just Bookmark this (or any) page; save it as "Scroll to Bottom"; then go back and paste the above code as the link address. Done.
To activate is just two taps (on bookmarks bar icon, then on bookmark), if you just make sure to arrange your bookmarks so that this one is on the top of the list.
Either that or jailbreak your iPhone and use Action Menu. It includes an icon to go quickly to the top or the bottom of the page. ;)
I gotta agree that tapping the top bar to jump to the top is super useful.
Orientation lock on iPad that is supposedly coming back. Other that that, pinch zoom.
Gotta go with pinch to zoom. Just remember, that three years ago, it didn't exist. We take it for granted now, but how amazing! Multitouch zoom. Nobody else has gotten it right since (ok, maybe Palm, but who is that any more?).
Activator adding more gestures like hold status bar, double tap status bar, swipe left/right/down on status bar, swipe from bottom/bottom left/bottom right and being able to assign different actions to those gestures really improves iOS IMO.
for me its when you double-tap the bottom right hand corner and a virtual penis appears. if you shake the iPhone really, really hard it will ejaculate all over the screen.
I love jail-break gestures.
Orientation is, in my opinion, the most useful.
For me it's a feature built into several apps, not a native thing...But pull down to refresh is my number one favorite hands down!
pull down to refresh! It's very useful in checking new e-mail, twits, data in safari browser. etc (jailbreaking)
Spotlight search, fastest way to get to an installed app when you have a lot
My favourite is Definatley four/five finger pinch to return to home on iPad. My least would be double tap to zoom why do that if you can just pinch
3 finger double tap to zoom the whole screen within any app is really useful if you have less than perfect eyesight like me and a particular font is a bit too small. brilliant built-in accessibility feature
Zoom on a web page is the best.
New:
Pinch in to Home is okay in 4.3 but I would rather it brought up a panel that showed all running apps (the horizontal list at the bottom is not as functional as a page view of running apps.
Agreed app to app side swipe is vague as you don't know what's going to come up.
Would love a close all apps feature in app tray after long press.
Just found 2 finger tap on text field selects all the text which I didnt know before. !
News to me - thanks!
The gesture that gets me three stars in Angry Birds! :)
I think the multi tasking is one of the best but my favorite is probably the orientation lock cause when I lay in bed it let's me have my phone on it side and not switch to landscape I love it
Pinch to zoom is like magic when the first time i saw it. Really cool..
I'm a big fan of swiping across the status bar to open SBSettings
Hey Georgia, it's not necessarily the same thing, but your Mac does have that... At least somehow...
All you gotta do is to click on the good old "Home" key on the keyboard. It works for every app with a "rolling bar" and it will send you right back to the top. ;)
You probably already knew that, but, anyway...
Kisses from Brazil!
Tap to zoom, two finger tap to zoom out on Google Maps. It's easier than pinching to zoom in and out if I'm driving.
Also, holding down keys to bring up other options. Not just accents/umlauts, but bullet points by holding down the hyphen, the degree symbol by holding down zero, and many others.
Same here Rene. Status bar tap to jump to top of page is #1 for me.
"(I wish my Mac had that!)" - Keyboard shortcuts: hit the home button on the full-sized Apple Keyboard or hit Command Up-Arrow on the Apple Wireless Keyboard or MacBook keyboard. (And you can also click "Jump to the spot that's clicked" in the "Click the scrollbar to:" setting in System Preferences > Appearance.)
Pinch to zoom. Amazes me every time. Also a great way to showcase the wonder of multitouch.
Favorite would have to be double tap to zoom to column, but an important one is three-finger-double-tap to zoom for apps and sites like this one that display teeny tiny barely readable fonts and un-zoomable pictures.
i don't know if anyone have noticed but in mac you can go to the top page and the bottom in any application.
fn+ up arrow key to go to top page
fn+down arrow key to go to bottom of the page
it is very useful specially when i can use in all of my applications.
Go to Settings >> General >> Home Button and change Double-Click to Camera.
Then, if you need to take a picture quickly, which is often the case, you can have your camera instantly.
Double-tap to zoom in/out to size block.
Double tap the status bar to introduce gravity on the springboard... Ohh wait? Y'all can't do that?
Mine is the activator shortcut when I hold my home button down and my flashlight turns on. Saves time and is a head turner.
Triple-click home button to toggle BLACK/WHITE. use it everytime I read at night.
Is that really a gesture?
Using activator, I set a "swipe from bottom of screen" to switch to the last app used. It is so damn handy. I'm glad to see apple thinking about adding it to the OS.
three finger double tap to zoom is fantastic when I don't wnt to pull out my readers
I'm gonna go with the sleep/awake button. One push and your phone is off. Awesome.
I guess orientation lock is my favorite now, but I really miss the double-click of the home button to go to my phone favorites.
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