Submitted by Marshall Walker on
There have been a lot of useful jailbreak tweaks released this year. For example, I love AssistantExtensions, which allows you to make Siri even better. However, SwipeSelection is quickly becoming my new favorite jailbreak tool.
The tweak is based on a YouTube video created by Daniel Hooper. Hooper published a concept video that demonstrated how editing text on an iPad could be easier. The jailbreaking community responded by creating SwipeSelection based on his ideas.
It's a simple tweak that makes typing on your iPhone much easier by allowing you to drag your finger to move your cursor. You can use one finger for a more precise cursor drag, or two fingers to move faster. You can even select text easier by holding the shift key and dragging your finger. All of this is demonstrated by Hooper's video posted below.
SwipeSelection is available for free in Cydia for both the iPad and iPhone. Non-jailbreakers who would like to see this added to iOS should follow the instructions below.
“I just saw Daniel Hooper’s iPad keyboard demo (Check out the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGQTaHGQ04Q) and I want that for my iPad! Apple says the iPad is the future of the Post-PC world; if it’s going to be my primary keyboard, I want a better way to edit text!
Tapping directly on text to move the cursor works well for small portions of text, but we don’t just write short portions of text anymore! When performing lots of edits in larger documents the direct interaction metaphor falls apart for cursor control. Even short portions of text can be painful to edit when you need to move the cursor to a precise location. Would you ever want to write a document on your computer without using the arrow keys? This is the reality iPad users face because they do not have the equivalent of arrow keys.There is a better way. Take advantage of gestures by making a drag over the keyboard UI move the cursor. Move the cursor in word increments when dragging with two fingers. And finally, let the user select text while dragging when they hold down shift.”