Tech companies are constantly pushing out new gestures and swipes in their operating systems to improve the user experience and keep the devices relevant.
While the developers at the Apple and Android ensure that every feature they push out in their new software update is heard loud and clear, sometimes it's the customer who unearths a quirk that they were clueless about in the past.
Such was the case with a Twitter user, who goes by the handle @krissys_kitchen when she tweeted out a 'trick' on the iPhones which left several users baffled.
"If you click and hold the spacebar, you can move the cursor instead of trying to drag the cursor itself with your fat thumb lol," she wrote. "How come you guys never told me this iPhone trick? I feel duped."
The 'hidden' feature literally gave Twitter users new life who couldn't thank her enough for sharing it with them on the platform.
While Krissy may have made life easier for many iOS users, it's worth pointing out that this 'hidden' feature has been around on 3D touch iPhones (iPhone 6S, iPhone 7, iPhone 8, iPhone X, iPhone Xs) for more than three years. With iPhone 6S, Apple introduced a feature which let the users long press anywhere on the keyboard to turn the phone into a trackpad that you could use as a cursor to select or highlight text - something you could do only on a laptop previously.
How to activate it?
1) Press firmly on the keyboard.
2) Once the keys disappear, swipe on the keyboard and position the cursor.
3) Press deeper to select/highlight text.
One reason that could explain why so many users have discovered the keyboard hack now could be the iOS 12 software update that replicates the 3D Touch-based cursor positioning and text selection on the iPhones that lack the 3D touch including the latest iPhone XR. To activate the 3D touch on a non-3D Apple device, simply tap and hold the Spacebar key to activate trackpad mode.
The trackpad mode was first introduced on iOS 9 for iPads way back at WWDC 2015.