[Review] SwipeSelection - Make iOS Text-Editing Less Cumbersome!

[Anthony Bouchard]

If you find text editing from iOS cumbersome, then you’re not alone. It’s even worse on the iPad because of the large screen requiring you to reach out further. A new jailbreak tweak dubbed SwipeSelection by iOS developer Kyle Howells aims for the stars to make text editing more intuitive by introducing swipe gestures to the realm of selecting text and moving the cursor around instead of having to tap or hold down to select text and move the cursor around.

SwipeSelection is absolutely easy to understand, as there are only three basic gestures to use with the tweak. The first being to activate the Shift key and then swipe across the keyboard to select text, the second being to swipe from one side of the keyboard to the other with one finger to move the cursor around slowly and accurately, and the last being to swipe from one side of the keyboard with two fingers to move the cursor quickly, which is less accurate because of the speed.

The swipe gestures feel more at home in the iOS environment because they’re so much more fluid. Having to reach out and tap on the text can lead to innacurate placement of the cursor and to top it all off your finger gets in the way of seeing what you’re doing. Because SwipeSelection has you select text from the keyboard area, you can always see what you are doing because your finger is never hovering over the text.

You will always have the option of choosing which method of moving the cursor or selecting the text you want to use – that of SwipeSelection, or using iOS’ stock method. SwipeSelection works with iOS 4 and newer and runs on the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. iPad owners will probably see this tweak as a must-have because of the fact that editing text on the iPad is a workout. For smaller screens like that on the iPhone or iPod touch, this is more of a luxury tweak.

Functionally, the tweak works absolutely beautifully. For a free jailbreak tweak, we couldn’t have asked for better functionality. If you want to grab this and give it a try, you can find it on the BigBoss repository today.

Name: SwipeSelection
Price: FREE
Version: 0.9-4
Requirements: iOS 4+
Repo: BigBoss
Developer: Kyle Howells
Editor's Rating: / 4.5/5

Sources: Kyle Howells

[Mrteacup]

*like*

[budsalinger]

I don't see it in cydia. i will check back.

[celeron]

Refresh your sources it's there.

[BenderRodriguez]

This thing is Amazing! I just used it in this sentence

[iPod]

Refresh your sources
edit: crap didnt see that cel already posted this. I hate how on the computer you have to hit view original post to see the real comments

[Xenthis]

This was a suggested tweak by some guy to Apple a few days ago.. Of course it's now reality.

[radioBirdman]

I'm not sure if this has a conflict with Action Menu + (or Showcase?) but when I use it to select text I don't get the pop-up selections like 'cut' 'copy' 'paste' etc. they only appear if I select the text (with this tweak) and then manually drag the handle (as you would without this tweak).
Is that expected behaviour or is it because of a conflict perhaps?


Edit - looks like I can prompt the options by tapping a handle and don't have to drag it.
Regardless this is a handy tweak!


....

[Jahooba]

Oh snap, this is awesome. It almost brought a tear to my eye it works so well.

[severe]

Installed on my iPhone. Awesome. A top level tweak, on par with SBSettings and a few others that are now essential downloads after a fresh jailbreak.

Looking forward to a new iPad 2 jailbreak more than ever.

[Sage I]

When I'm watching The Loading Wheel Of Cydia many times each day, I await the results in hope of a new functional tweak or utility... The moment I click on the changes tab and see that cordless drill on the left my heart skips a beat... I check them out and see if they will make my 3 year Jailbroken iPhone Relationship stronger and sweeter... This tweak just opened up a whole new beautiful dynamic in the relationship with i Phone... I used it in this post right after installing the tweak... I'm sending $10 to Mr. Howell... The tweak is worthy of being in the pkg backup/dropbox memory in case of emergency factory restore surgery using tools like tiny umbrella... The time it takes me to re-jailbreak, re-install pkg backup and get all my tweaks back with the push of a "Do Restore" button is all the time I can bare using a stock iPhone... SwipeSelction was used smoothly many times in this novel of a post... I love all the creative people who make it possible for I to type this while using things like color keyboard to enhance the beauty, call bar to keep me from having to leave this post and modmyi for being so quick to post a review to help me decide if I should give this one a try! THE END

[brodimus]

Well this is just sweet.

[Liveitlive]

Only issue I have is when you go to use the international keyboards key...i Use the emoticons... It moves the typing cursor when I go to swipe pages. I can try n tap the little dots to change pages, but still Combersome. Other than that... A must have.

Well look at that... I go to install after I run into my emoji problem again and there is an update for the vey issue I had decided not use this tweak for! Guess ask and you shall receive lol. 10/10 for me so far.

[celeron]

Will download this. All comments on here are positive, so it must be good

[thazsar]

Honestly, I only got this cuz Jahooba gave it a thumbs up. I've got to say...this tweak is TERRIFIC!!!

Working together w/ KBShortcuts, SwipeSelection makes typing so much easier!!!!

Goodbye SwipeShiftCaret....

Great job!

[csglinux]

That's really useful!

One for the wish-list though... I wish swiping up lines would also work (in addition to swiping along lines), because the two finger swipe doesn't seem to be as useful (it often registers a spurious character before it slides the cursor).

[thazsar]

Just made my own video for SwipeSelection! Needs some added features but it's pretty good regardless!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS_pt...=youtube_gdata

[vantheman169]

I don't see it in cydia. i will check back.

Spell out the whole word in search. It's there.

[Sevael]

One for the wish-list though... I wish swiping up lines would also work (in addition to swiping along lines), because the two finger swipe doesn't seem to be as useful (it often registers a spurious character before it slides the cursor).

These two problems (lack of up/down swiping and two-finger swipes typing additional characters) are deal breakers for me. I'll love this tweak once it updates to fix these two issues and behaves like the original concept video; until then it won't get much use.

It would also be nice to have a section in the Settings app to adjust how fast the one- and two-finger scrolling works. It's too slow for my taste.

[anime007]

too bad this doesn't work with baidu input method