Apple has patented a new tap-based gesture system that would allow users to nudge the sides of their iPhone or iPad to interact with objects onscreen. The gesture could be used for a whole host of tasks, including selecting text letter by letter.
Published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Tuesday, “Fine-tuning an operation based on tapping” describes a system for mobile devices that solves some of the problems we face with touch-based smartphones and tablets.
Specifically, the tap-based gestures focus on fine, granular controls that aren’t always easy to carry out on a touchscreen — such as selecting a single character in a line of text.Apple’s solution to this problem for now is a virtual magnification loupe that zooms in on text as you select it, and the new virtual trackpad feature that’s baked into Apple’s keyboard in iOS 9. But Apple’s patent suggests it wants to make things even easier using the motion sensors inside your device.
“In one embodiment, a user is able to move an onscreen object left or right with extreme precision, perhaps nudged a pixel at a time, by lightly tapping on the side of an iPhone,” AppleInsider explains. “Another embodiment detailing text selection notes users can easily extend or contract an active boundary through suitable tapping procedures.”
Users would tap on the side of their device — not the display — and the gesture would be detected by the gyroscope and accelerometer. Apple notes that varying input magnitudes could be supported, such as light taps that select one character at a time, and stronger taps that might select an entire word or line.
As with all features and inventions that appear in Apple patents, there is no guarantee that this one will ever make its way into an Apple product. Apple first filed for the patent in January 2013, so it has been sat on the idea for more than two years without doing anything with it.
However, it certainly seems like a neat idea, and Apple has been keen to adopt new methods of interacting with modern devices beyond the touchscreen — such as the Digital Crown and Force Touch features on Apple Watch.
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