{"id":479893,"date":"2026-02-17T05:13:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T05:13:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/479893\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T05:13:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T05:13:14","slug":"gboard-might-finally-add-a-cursor-the-only-good-thing-about-the-iphones-keyboard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/479893\/","title":{"rendered":"Gboard might finally add a cursor \u2013 the only good thing about the iPhone’s keyboard"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I\u2019m not the first to sing the praises of Gboard. Google has done an excellent job evolving the once-basic AOSP keyboard into the most obvious choice on Android, to the point where I\u2019m not sure why I\u2019d recommend using anything else besides it. Now, Google might be working on fixing the one shortcoming I\u2019ve found while typing on Gboard daily since its initial branding, and in a strange twist, it\u2019s an idea taken directly from iOS.<\/p>\n

The folks at Android Authority<\/a> managed to uncover a hidden cursor mode in the latest Gboard beta APK<\/a> that should make moving around documents a whole lot easier. Right now, pressing and holding on Gboard\u2019s space bar allows you to move the cursor left or right in a line of text to make adjustments with a simple slide gesture, but if you\u2019re looking to move more than a few words back in your entry, it can be exhausting. This new cursor mode replaces the keyboard with a virtual trackpad, allowing you to move the cursor to anywhere on your display \u2014 even, in its current implementation, outside of the text field.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve used an iPhone in the last decade or so, you\u2019re probably familiar with this general approach. Apple initially added cursor mode back in the 3D Touch days of iOS, but you needed hardware that supported the company\u2019s haptics-enabled display panels to use it. With iOS 12 in 2018, the company expanded the feature to every iPhone, allowing for easy text adjustments by \u2014 you guessed it \u2014 holding down the spacebar.<\/p>\n

While I find Google\u2019s keyboard on Android better than Apple\u2019s iOS offering in practically every way, I do have to hand it to the iPhone: it got this one right. I almost never use Gboard\u2019s currently cursor-scrolling method because it\u2019s tedious and slow; even with a pair of fat thumbs, it\u2019s faster for me to try and select wherever I need the cursor to be on-screen. That\u2019s not true any time I\u2019m typing on an iPhone, where adjusting your cursor takes milliseconds to get exactly right. And on iOS, that speed is especially important \u2014 after all, you\u2019re going to make a lot of mistakes on that keyboard, and many of them won\u2019t even be your fault.<\/p>\n

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Assuming this feature eventually rolls out to a wide audience, I\u2019m curious to see how it feels compared to Apple\u2019s implementation. Lots of aspects of this are similar: the spacebar shortcut, replacing the on-screen keys with a touchpad, the freedom to move your cursor wherever it needs to go. The big difference is the cursor\u2019s current ability to hop outside of the text field, though I could absolutely see that being a quirk that quietly disappears before a full launch.<\/p>\n

With this change, I can\u2019t imagine any virtual keyboard dethroning Gboard from the top of the pile anytime soon, though we\u2019ll likely need to wait a while longer for any kind of rollout. But after finally delivering the bottom address bar of my dreams<\/a> in Chrome on Android last year, I\u2019m excited to see Google once again taking a page out of a competitor\u2019s playbook whenever their closest rival gets something right.<\/p>\n

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