New iPad Gestures for Cursor Movement and Text Selection

With iOS 9, Apple has added a new option for selecting text to the onscreen keyboard. Using a two-finger drag gesture, it is now much easier (at least for me) to place the cursor right where I want it. Another two-finger tap selects the word closest to the cursor, and another two-finger drag makes a selection.

I have found this method of text selection to be much faster than the old one where you had to tap and hold to get a magnifying glass which allowed you to place the cursor and then select from editing options from a popover menu. The new gestures work very well with the new Shortcut Bar that appears above the onscreen keyboard on the iPad. This Shortcut Bar provides shortcuts for editing and formatting options such as cut, copy, past, bold, underline and italicize. Finally, if you use Zoom, you can have it follow the cursor as you move within the text area by making sure Follow Focus is enabled in the Zoom settings (General > Accessibility > Zoom).

Here is a brief video showing the new cursor movement and text selection gestures for the iPad in action. At the end of the video I show how these gestures can work with Zoom.