iOS Pro: Getting to Grips with One Hand
The birth of the iPhone 11 Pro marks the death of one of the iPhone’s most pro features: 3D Touch text editing.
Although it’s devastating to see this incredible feature disappear, it’s interesting to see Apple introducing new ways to make it easier to use your iPhone with only one hand. I’m going to look at some of the iOS features that still make me feel like a pro now I can no longer use 3D Touch.
Why one-handed use is so important
I imagine anyone fortunate enough to have two hands regularly uses only one of them to hold their phone. You often have something better to do with your free hand. Whether holding an umbrella, a coffee, a baby or—in the case of a true pro—a briefcase, you do most of your typing, swiping and liking using a single thumb.
When you’re using only one hand, it’s difficult to reach the top of the screen to engage things like a search bar, a back button or other navigation bar buttons. Without the support of a second hand, you risk dropping your device. And since the cost of your device is greater than the deposit my parents paid on our first family home, it would be a costly drop!
With phones getting bigger, it’s getting harder to reach into the top corners without using another hand. However, there are improvements we can make as developers to improve user experience with one hand. In this article I’ll explore some improvements Apple has made.
Native iOS features to improve one-handed use
1. Pull-to-dismiss on iOS 13
The newest one-handed improvement is in the way iOS 13 modals can be dismissed by swiping down with one finger (or for most people, one thumb). Modals in iOS 13 by default do not fill the entire screen. Instead they act like a “card” which appears in front of the presenting view, leaving a gap at the top of the screen where the very top of the underlying view is still visible. If the presented content’s scroll position is at the top (beginning of the content) then swiping down anywhere will dismiss the view.
What’s really cool is that developers can opt out of pull-to-dismiss when there are multiple options or if the dismiss action is ambiguous. Instead we can display an action sheet of options to give the user complete control.
This is a one-handed improvement because it means you don’t have to reach for the Done or Cancel button at the top of the screen. (It would be nice if Apple had also added a “Save” option to the action sheet!)
Swipe-to-dismiss has been common in third-party apps for a while. Lots of apps support a swipe gesture to dismiss photos. It’s even seen in Apple’s own apps such as Music, to dismiss the Now playing view. However, with iOS 13 this behaviour comes as default for third-party developers. Result!
(Developers: implement presentationControllerDidAttemptToDismiss to detect dismissal and present an action sheet.)
2. Swipe to go back
The Back button has always lived in the top-left of the navigation bar. Since iOS 7, users have been able to swipe from the left edge of the screen to go back. This gesture is the same action as pressing Back but doesn’t require our coffee-slurping, briefcase-waving pros to reach their tired (right?) thumb to the top (left!) of the screen.
Some app developers implement their own Back buttons or hide the navigation bar altogether and fail to realise that they can still leverage the native swipe-to-go-back functionality by adding a single line of code to their view controller. Please do it!
It’s interesting to note that in the iOS App Store app, if you’ve opened an article from the Today tab, you can swipe from the left edge of the screen to close it. This is despite it having been presented modally rather than pushed onto a navigation stack! Pull-to-dismiss AND swipe-from-left-edge are BOTH supported.
3. Pull-to-search from home screen
Swipe down anywhere on the iOS home screen and the search bar will be revealed along with the keyboard so you can immediately start typing. The introduction of this feature meant that no longer did you have to swipe past the first page of your home screen content to reach the search function.
Swiping past the first page is still an option and it reveals your widgets along with the search bar at the top. However, to engage with the search bar from there, you need to awkwardly reach to the top of the screen. Pull-to-search is a one-handed shortcut for the pros amongst you.
4. One-handed keyboard
This is, I suppose, the most obvious advancement. The clue is in the name. Apple is explicit in its intended use of this feature. I don’t personally see much value in it, but I’m on a standard model, rather than a Max model. Maybe this is useful for iPhone Max (or formerly, Plus) users.
5. iOS keyboard as a trackpad
You can use the native keyboard as a kind of trackpad. On a device with 3D Touch you can force-press anywhere on the keyboard to enter trackpad mode. Then drag your finger to move the cursor within the text view or text field. Force-press again while dragging and you’ll select the word under the cursor. Force-press again and your selection will increase to the paragraph. Force-press again to cancel selection and again to re-cycle through the selection options.
Text selection like this felt like a real one-handed pro feature. Sadly it’s no longer available on the iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max. But you can still turn the keyboard into a simple trackpad by long-pressing the spacebar. Not quite as pro, but still allows for basic cursor control without your one thumb having to leave the bottom portion of the screen.
Bottom third
This is where it’s at, yo! Your thumb is comfortable at the bottom of the screen. The keyboard’s accessory view is as high up the screen as I would ever really want to reach with my thumb.
What you can do as a developer
Ensure you don’t override native functionality. For example, if you have implemented your own Back button or collapsed the navigation bar, ensure you still support swipe to go back. If you display a modal, consider keeping the iOS 13 native pull-to-dismiss functionality (it comes for free, so no excuses) and consider showing an action sheet to avoid ambiguity over the action taken upon dismissal.
I think modals that don’t support pull-to-dismiss are quickly going to feel out of place, or even buggy. Just like when the swipe-to-go-back feature doesn’t work.
Another simple way you can help is to ensure you add Next/Previous/Go buttons to the keyboard’s accessory view, so you can easily navigate between form fields. And ensure you hook up the keyboard’s Return key to act as a Next or Submit (Go) button.
Aim to limit the need for a user to reach to the navigation bar. The below images are some examples in iOS stock apps where the experience is negatively impacted by having to reach to the navigation bar to back-out of a view.
The unmentionables
Apple has a habit of shouting about the enhancements to usability without mentioning their own degradations. (Rearrangement of the cursor keys on MacBook, anyone?)
1. The fact that I need to reach to the top of the screen to initiate Control Center, I get, but I don’t like. I’m not going to risk that with one hand while my shiny new phone is still new and shiny.
2. I’d say the top three rows of apps on my home screen are pretty much unreachable with one hand without risking dropping and damaging this costly device. Subsequently I position my most-used apps along the bottom few rows, with my most-used apps either in the dock or on the bottom row. I have apps I’ve never used sitting along the top rows just to push the ones I do use into a reachable position. I’d love Apple to allow me to position apps anywhere on the screen, rather than enforcing this top-left-to-bottom-right layout.
3. A feature of iOS I’m not a fan of is Reachability. On an iPhone X or later, this is initiated by swiping down from the bottom of the screen. It results in the top half of the screen moving to the bottom so you can more easily reach elements at the top of screen. However, in doing so, the bottom half completely disappears. I think this is an admission of guilt that there may be content out of reach that is worth interacting with. I have disabled this feature on my device because I’ve only ever initiated it accidentally, which is just annoying.
There are improvements that could help make this content more reachable without the Reachability solution/afterthought/hack.
Look out!
I’m going to explore and propose some improvements in my following articles, so watch this space if you’re a fan of the pro one-handed user experience.
Follow me on Twitter for updates, or just say hi. 👋
