Smart Text Selection and Text Magnification on Android 8.0 and 9.0
When you select text in one app, such as a street address in your browser, Android presents you with a suggested shortcut—in this case, the option of finding the location in Google Maps.
Smart Text can be used to navigate to specific apps based on selections (phone numbers, email address, street addresses, and names) from web pages, emails, Recents, Notifications, and some other screens that display text.
- You’re editing a document and want to make sure you’re highlighting all the important text.
- You’re trying to select a specific passage and it’s difficult to see what you’re dragging your finger over.
- You need to quickly find a particular word or phrase in a large document and don’t have time to highlight everything manually.
- You need to quickly find a specific passage in a text editor and don’t have time to highlight everything manually, but want the selection area enlarged so you can see more of the text at once.
Smart Text Selection:
URLs
Android Oreo and Pie users can now enjoy the always-on selection feature, which is available in all versions of the platforms. This means that you don’t have to do anything to get started; just turn on the feature and it will work.
Android smartphones come with a handy little feature that many people don’t know about. This feature allows you to easily access your contacts, calendar, and other important information by pressing and holding on a contact’s name or number. ..
There are a few things to keep in mind when selecting URLs. First, make sure the URL is easy to remember. Second, make sure the URL is relevant to your story. Finally, make sure the URL is appropriate for your audience. ..
Android’s notifications screen can be difficult to hyperlink because the addresses are not always pre-filled. ..
With the advent of Smart Text Selection, you can now just highlight the text you want to copy and press Ctrl+C (or Command+C on Macs) to copy it. Then, just paste it into the address bar in Chrome. ..
With Smart Text Selection, you can easily select text by double-tapping the URL. This feature is especially helpful when you need to open the URL in a default browser. ..
Chrome is a web browser that, when opened, takes you to the website or page you selected by default. ..
Smart Text Selection:
Locations
If you have a Google Maps account and are using an Android phone, you can select “Google Maps” as the map application when you open the pop-up menu.
If your phone has more than one mapping application installed, as most Android devices do, you’ll get a more specific “Map” menu entry, as shown below.
Map presents all available apps with mapping capabilities.
If you tap the Google Maps shortcut, Android launches that app and it searches for and displays the location.
If you want your selection here to become the default, select Always.)
If you want to use Google Maps, and then always choose “Map,” the next time you make a smart text selection concerning mapping addresses, you won’t need to go through a step or two.
Smart Text Selection:
Email Addresses
To select a text message in Android, you first need to open the message. If it’s an email, you can open it by clicking on the email address in your inbox or on the main screen. If it’s a text message, you can open it by tapping on the message icon at the top of your screen. ..
Your phone’s email app list is displayed when you tap on the Email icon on the Home screen. ..
To open an email client on your Android phone, tap the desired app shortcut. This time, the email client will be launched and the “To” field will be populated with the address you selected at the beginning of this procedure. You can also tell Android to present your desired email client by choosing “Always” instead of “Just once.”
Text Selection Made
Easy
Here’s a text selection option that I have found handy. After all these years, I still have trouble manipulating those little blue drag handles for selecting blocks of text. It’s not that I can’t move them where I want them to go; it’s that I can’t see what’s beneath my finger, or what’s actually being selected, as I drag.
Android has solved this problem by magnifying the text directly beneath and either side of my fingertip, and displaying it just above that.
After I first installed Android 9 and this started happening, I thought it was some kind of glitch, until I investigated it. This feature works just about everywhere you can select text, including text input fields.
I find this particularly handy when composing text messages. It makes proofing—seeing what I’ve written—much easier.
The power to manipulate screen content with our fingers is undeniably powerful, and little innovations like Smart Text Selection and selected text magnification are just small examples of what developers can and will come up with. Anything that enhances convenience and productivity, no matter how small it is, is progress. ..
