iOS 14 Text Editing/Navigation Tips

Text Replacement for commonly used text

I type my email address a lot. Furthermore, I use a wildcard on my domain so I always register with an address like: <some-spammy-service>@nerdtower.com. To save myself some typing, I use one of these shortcuts:

• nt → nerdtower.com
• atnt → @nerdtower.com

I also have a couple emojis that I use often enough that I find it handy to just type these shortcuts rather than have to open the emoji keyboard:

• kkk → 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
• ppp → 🎉🎉🎉

Text editing/navigation with gestures

I write text messages and emails on my iPhone. I take notes on my iPhone. I write/edit blog posts on my iPhone. I write a memory every night on my iPhone. I’m chatting in Slack or Discord on my iPhone. I do a whole lot of text writing and editing on my iPhone. Thus, for me, it makes a whole lot of sense to optimize text editing and navigation in iOS. Here are some of my most used gestures.

Hold finger down anywhere on keyboard to move text cursor. I actually like using the spacebar so I don’t accidentally type a letter. Being able to more precisely move the cursor around a text area is a huge win. Without this, trying to get my fat fingers to tap the space between two lowercase l’s would be a huge pain.

Double-tap text to select a word. No need to drag a selection area between two precise points: a word is such a larger area to be able to work with!

Triple-tap text to select a sentence. Similar to word selection, if I can just triple-tap a piece of text to select the entire sentence without worrying about wrapping or knowing precisely where the sentence starts or ends: big productivity win!

3 finger pinch out to paste text. This is especially useful when trying to paste a URL in a Markdown link between the narrow ()’s.

3 finger pinch to copy text. This is mostly useful on the iPad when not using a keyboard. So, admittedly, not a tip for iOS but iPadOS. 👻