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You know, until you mentioned it just now, I’d forgotten my phone even has 3D Touch. It had been literally weeks since I last thought to use force-touch for an

You know, until you mentioned it just now, I’d forgotten my phone even has 3D Touch. It had been literally weeks since I last thought to use force-touch for anything, mostly because there is zero indication where it will work. And it is half-baked in the sense that when I do activate 3D Touch, it’s usually by accident. It is almost the same gesture as deleting apps on the home screen! I go to delete an app, press-and-hold a little too long and instead of squiggly icons with delete buttons I get...a menu? And usually I get that the 2nd time I try, too. Force-touch badly needs something to make it obvious, and they need to work a lot harder on making it not overlap with anything else. Ironically, for an interface that loves gratuitous animation, force-touchable objects might have made a lot more sense with some fancy appearance or animation and they have none.

ino 11y ago
Start using the keyboard trackpad for moving the cursor, selecting and deleting words, paragraphs or the whole text input. It's the killer app.
- rohankshir 11y ago
  holy shit
- makecheck 11y ago
  Well, I forget to use it on the keyboard too. :) And the keyboard has exactly the same problem; force-touch uses space that already has a purpose and a gesture that is somewhat similar to that of the normal keyboard function. I tried it just now and there is a decent chance I will start typing random characters instead of activating it. That, to me, is a failure of an interface. I will admit that once activated correctly, the mini-trackpad is a better method for moving the cursor (although, almost anything could improve over the default text editing on iOS).
- SonicSoul 11y ago
  wow nice! I was only aware of the call button (useless 3 contact shortcut) and app store instant search. this is almost like a Easter egg.
- jaysonelliot 11y ago
  Unfortunately the keyboard force touch only works about ~70% of the time, which is too unpredictable for me to start incorporating into regular use as a user. It's odd that after ten years of development, Apple still hasn't made their keyboard just work. Selecting and manipulating text is still buggy and unpredictable.
  - c0g 11y ago
    Wait until the cursor stops blinking. Takes some tenths of a second after you stop typing. I was tearing out my hair until I read that.
  - 0942v8653 11y ago
    I agree. I got really excited about the keyboard thing (when I edit code on my phone, proper cursor movement is severely lacking), but when I tried it on a friend's 6S I was severely underwhelmed. The activation force seemed random, and the cursor would never land where you expected. It was slower than using the little magnifying glass on the actual text. Touch keyboards are a hard problem, but we use them so often (I'm using one now) that I think Apple would be smart to put some more thought into it.
    - xzi 11y ago
      That's an accurate assessment. I use the trackpad on my 6s+ frequently. 50% of the time it works perfectly. 50% of the time I apparently don't lift my finger in the speed or direction iOS expects, so the cursor moves forwards or backwards 1 or 2 characters from where I wanted it to stop. And I have to try again because there's no other way to nudge the cursor a character or two. Just a little tweaking and it would be perfect. I don't have this problem with using the keyboard normally, which is quite accurate.
      - 0942v8653 11y ago
        I just looked at the changelog for iOS 9.3 and it says: > Improves reliability when using 3D Touch on the keyboard Hopefully this means "just a little tweaking" was done and the feature is more comfortable to use.
- dkonofalski 11y ago
  Pardon my ignorance, but what do you mean by "keyboard trackpad"? Is this on iOS or what? Edit: HOLY WHAT!?! How did I not know that this exists?!?! I just figured it out. If you didn't know what it is, like me, then pull up any place where you can input text. Type something in and then Force Touch anywhere on the keyboard while it's showing. Your cursor will move with your finger like a trackpad. That's amazing.
  - Kronopath 11y ago
    I'd like to take the opportunity to point out that when people talk about how mobile touch interfaces have "low discoverability", comments like this are exactly what they're talking about.
    - trollingineer 11y ago
      Thank you, Captain Obvious.
    - madeofpalk 11y ago
      But it should also be noted there's a difference of importance between the discoverability for basic functions, like opening apps or moving the cursor 'regularly' in a text field. Then you have the discoverability of the shortcuts, or 'power user' features which you can do without Of course, this is all on a grade. Control Centre has a medium-low discoverability (given only a visual hint on the lock screen), and is more vital to the iPhone. The 3D Touch cursor movement is a lot less necessary (I know about it but never use it), and is a lot less discoverable. The 3D Touch-from-edge-of-screen-to-switch-between-apps gesture is there as well, but make slightly more discoverable as its easier to accidentally trigger it to learn about it for the first time. An aside, I actually find the 'advanced' cursor movement, in both the 3D Touch form on iPhone 6s Plus and in the long-press form on the iPad Pro, to be next to impossible to use. I can never reliably figure out what triggers the different modes of it (cursor movement, text selection, etc) and thus barely ever use it.
      - LeoNatan25 11y ago
- mcintyre1994 11y ago
  I just wish this worked on third party keyboards, I can't force myself off Swiftkey to Apple's keyboard at all.
- kweks 11y ago
  This app also exists for all jail broken users. A swipe over the keyboard controls the cursor, and can select, move, erase, etc. Very smooth and natural.
- afandian 11y ago
  It's not the killer app. Blackberry devices (e.g. Passport) have had this for ages. (Not a problem that Apple's copying tech, it's just not unique)
  - jolux 11y ago
    If by ages you mean a little over a year, then yes. But just because another device had it first doesn't mean it's not the killer app for 3D touch.
    - afandian 11y ago
      Sorry I thought you meant that 3D touch made the keyboard selection the killer app for the iPhone platform. It seems like a year and a half is a long time in mobile phone tech. Google apps have already said that the browser that Blackberry is out of date (which speaks about both the release cycle of Blackberry for a newish phone and Google). Either way, the touch interface is very cool on Blackberry.
- peatmoss 11y ago
  The keyboard trackpad almost always lands me off by one character however. Something about releasing pressure changes how my finger contacts the screen. I love the idea, but I usually end up needing to do the long press after trying and failing 3 times to position my cursor where I want it.
- bobwaycott 11y ago
  Yeah, kb trackpad is pretty much the only thing I knowingly use 3D Touch for. I randomly discovered it months ago, thought it was some confusing but at first, then realized what I'd done. The accuracy has always been slightly disappointing, though. As well as a few other little quirks, like losing its place in long text, getting stuck at the top/bottom without scrolling upward/downward, etc. but overall, pretty handy.
- wingerlang 11y ago
  It's nice, but it could've been done in software. In fact I've used that on my iPhones since probably 2013/2014.
- zimpenfish 11y ago
  For me and my stubby wildly uncontrollable fingers, this is worth the upgrade to the 6S almost all by itself. I use this multiple times a day and it's beautiful. (I do use 3DTouch shortcuts as well and they probably save me a whole bunch of minutes over an entire day.)
- chenster 11y ago
  It's a nice feature. However, I found it's hard to get it right to use kb as a mouse with 3D touch. Sometimes it just wont' register no matter how hard and fast I press down. Very frustrating. Apple, are you listening?
- pilif 11y ago
  As a person writing a lot of non-english text, I hate this feature with a passion because I constantly trigger it by accident when I'm trying to press-and-hold over a key to get to an alternate letter with some diacritics on it. With my muscle memory, I end up marking parts of the text and overwriting it afterwards instead of inserting that one letter with the diacritics.
themartorana 11y ago
The only time I remember is when I tap a link just a hair too hard and it doesn't open because it went through a fraction of a second of the force touch action. I've never "hated" a feature on the iPhone. I very strongly dislike this one.
- macNchz 11y ago
  I had that problem and almost turned it off before noticing that you could adjust the pressure sensitivity. At the maximum setting I never run into the issue anymore.
- SonicSoul 11y ago
  I dislike the 3d touch on the new macbook trackpad for the same reason. i try to move something but it decides to show me a dictionary definition of that word. does anyone use the dictionary that much for this to be the default behavior?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - wlesieutre 11y ago
    You have to press pretty hard to trigger the second click... Once you feel it click the first time, don't keep pressing harder? Assuming you haven't set this already, you can go into Trackpad preferences and change it from Medium to Firm. That'll switch from "you have to press pretty hard" to "goddamn dude, are you trying to break the trackpad in half?" If you're still doing that by accident, you can disable it completely. If anybody has a force meter handy, I'm curious what the actual numbers are on these. EDIT: QuickLook is the more useful function than Dictionary, IMO. I use it regularly.
    - breatheoften 11y ago
      I turned it off on my Magic Trackpad 2. It absolutely breaks drag and drop for me -- nearly 90% of drag and drop operations result in unintentional force click (which never does anything useful)
Razengan 11y ago
Re: a lack of indication where it will work, maybe it will be address in a future device that has an actual 3D display, where some UI elements hover over the "surface" closer to the user, apparent that they can be pushed in deeper. I wonder if Nintendo will implement that in their next handheld. :)
Esau 11y ago
I think 3D touch is a lot like a right-mouse click in the desktop environment, in that there is rarely anything to indicate where you can do it. You basically have to read about it or just try. That said, I don't personally care for it. I also feel that iOS is getting too complicated.
- Throwaway23412 11y ago
  A right-click equivalent already existed: a long press. 3D Touch is the long press controlled by finger pressure instead of time pressed. It took an already hard-to-discover feature and made it more nuanced (that is, more complicated).
  - vrikis 11y ago
    Except when you're on the home screen; long press will let you wiggle icons and force touch will let you get app shortcuts.
    - Throwaway23412 11y ago
      Why couldn't long press do both? Make "wiggle icons" the top app shortcut or something. ("Move icon" would probably be a less silly name.) You don't see how what you just wrote is drastically more complicated to the average user? Tiny differences in time and pressure determines two different features when pressing an app icon.
      - oldmanjay 11y ago
        Don't invoke "the average user" when you only have data on one user. We measure things these days.
  - afoxtron 11y ago
    >It took an already hard-to-discover feature and made it more nuanced (that is, more complicated). I would argue that it fixed the long hold, honestly. Waiting for long holds is a total pain. Being able to reach the same level of contextual menus instantly without long holding is a huge source of relief for the user in apps that rely on that kind of interaction.
smitherfield 11y ago
Before I learned the keyboard-trackpad thing, I just used it for that annoying Safari bug where you tap a link and it doesn't open; for whatever reason push-popping it with 3d-touch works.
- prawn 11y ago
  If it's the quirk I think it is, you can also tap and hold the link and drag down a bit. The link often then activates.
tbabb 11y ago
Cursor navigation with 3D touch is very nice, and a long time coming. Tap and hold the keyboard when typing to move the cursor around.
melvinmt 11y ago
I discovered 3D Touch after watching an Apple commercial on TV, 3 months after I got the iPhone 6s Plus.
PostThisTooFast 11y ago
"there is zero indication where it will work." This is the fundamental problem with Apple in general: the secret UI. Working with their products has become an Easter-egg hunt. Apple is hurtling backward to the days of non-GUI software, when you had to have a template of hotkeys printed out as a strip and placed on your keyboard. It's the very thing Apple used to make fun of IBM for. The G in GUI stands for GRAPHICAL. The fact that Apple has forgotten that, and doesn't get roundly called out on it in every review, is pathetic. Now they're pulling more idiotic crap like removing the headphone jack from media-centric mobile devices, and making a computer with no power jack or video output or proper external-storage I/O; just an outdated USB port. Meanwhile they introduce junk like "3-D Touch." Meanwhile, there's no OS-level support for the vaunted Pencil! It can't be used for text entry! Oh, and year after year, they don't fix this idiotic blunder: http://goldmanosi.blogspot.com/2012/06/will-apple-ever-fix-iphones-biggest.html http://goldmanosi.blogspot.com/2012/06/will-apple-ever-fix-i...
philliphaydon 11y ago
I use the 3D Touch all the time, new email message, quick contacts, preview emails or photos. I love it.

ino 11y ago

Start using the keyboard trackpad for moving the cursor, selecting and deleting words, paragraphs or the whole text input. It's the killer app.

rohankshir 11y ago
holy shit
makecheck 11y ago
Well, I forget to use it on the keyboard too. :) And the keyboard has exactly the same problem; force-touch uses space that already has a purpose and a gesture that is somewhat similar to that of the normal keyboard function. I tried it just now and there is a decent chance I will start typing random characters instead of activating it. That, to me, is a failure of an interface. I will admit that once activated correctly, the mini-trackpad is a better method for moving the cursor (although, almost anything could improve over the default text editing on iOS).
SonicSoul 11y ago
wow nice! I was only aware of the call button (useless 3 contact shortcut) and app store instant search. this is almost like a Easter egg.
jaysonelliot 11y ago
Unfortunately the keyboard force touch only works about ~70% of the time, which is too unpredictable for me to start incorporating into regular use as a user. It's odd that after ten years of development, Apple still hasn't made their keyboard just work. Selecting and manipulating text is still buggy and unpredictable.
- c0g 11y ago
  Wait until the cursor stops blinking. Takes some tenths of a second after you stop typing. I was tearing out my hair until I read that.
- 0942v8653 11y ago
  I agree. I got really excited about the keyboard thing (when I edit code on my phone, proper cursor movement is severely lacking), but when I tried it on a friend's 6S I was severely underwhelmed. The activation force seemed random, and the cursor would never land where you expected. It was slower than using the little magnifying glass on the actual text. Touch keyboards are a hard problem, but we use them so often (I'm using one now) that I think Apple would be smart to put some more thought into it.
  - xzi 11y ago
    That's an accurate assessment. I use the trackpad on my 6s+ frequently. 50% of the time it works perfectly. 50% of the time I apparently don't lift my finger in the speed or direction iOS expects, so the cursor moves forwards or backwards 1 or 2 characters from where I wanted it to stop. And I have to try again because there's no other way to nudge the cursor a character or two. Just a little tweaking and it would be perfect. I don't have this problem with using the keyboard normally, which is quite accurate.
    - 0942v8653 11y ago
      I just looked at the changelog for iOS 9.3 and it says: > Improves reliability when using 3D Touch on the keyboard Hopefully this means "just a little tweaking" was done and the feature is more comfortable to use.
dkonofalski 11y ago
Pardon my ignorance, but what do you mean by "keyboard trackpad"? Is this on iOS or what? Edit: HOLY WHAT!?! How did I not know that this exists?!?! I just figured it out. If you didn't know what it is, like me, then pull up any place where you can input text. Type something in and then Force Touch anywhere on the keyboard while it's showing. Your cursor will move with your finger like a trackpad. That's amazing.
- Kronopath 11y ago
  I'd like to take the opportunity to point out that when people talk about how mobile touch interfaces have "low discoverability", comments like this are exactly what they're talking about.
  - trollingineer 11y ago
    Thank you, Captain Obvious.
  - madeofpalk 11y ago
    But it should also be noted there's a difference of importance between the discoverability for basic functions, like opening apps or moving the cursor 'regularly' in a text field. Then you have the discoverability of the shortcuts, or 'power user' features which you can do without Of course, this is all on a grade. Control Centre has a medium-low discoverability (given only a visual hint on the lock screen), and is more vital to the iPhone. The 3D Touch cursor movement is a lot less necessary (I know about it but never use it), and is a lot less discoverable. The 3D Touch-from-edge-of-screen-to-switch-between-apps gesture is there as well, but make slightly more discoverable as its easier to accidentally trigger it to learn about it for the first time. An aside, I actually find the 'advanced' cursor movement, in both the 3D Touch form on iPhone 6s Plus and in the long-press form on the iPad Pro, to be next to impossible to use. I can never reliably figure out what triggers the different modes of it (cursor movement, text selection, etc) and thus barely ever use it.
    - LeoNatan25 11y ago
mcintyre1994 11y ago
I just wish this worked on third party keyboards, I can't force myself off Swiftkey to Apple's keyboard at all.
kweks 11y ago
This app also exists for all jail broken users. A swipe over the keyboard controls the cursor, and can select, move, erase, etc. Very smooth and natural.
afandian 11y ago
It's not the killer app. Blackberry devices (e.g. Passport) have had this for ages. (Not a problem that Apple's copying tech, it's just not unique)
- jolux 11y ago
  If by ages you mean a little over a year, then yes. But just because another device had it first doesn't mean it's not the killer app for 3D touch.
  - afandian 11y ago
    Sorry I thought you meant that 3D touch made the keyboard selection the killer app for the iPhone platform. It seems like a year and a half is a long time in mobile phone tech. Google apps have already said that the browser that Blackberry is out of date (which speaks about both the release cycle of Blackberry for a newish phone and Google). Either way, the touch interface is very cool on Blackberry.
peatmoss 11y ago
The keyboard trackpad almost always lands me off by one character however. Something about releasing pressure changes how my finger contacts the screen. I love the idea, but I usually end up needing to do the long press after trying and failing 3 times to position my cursor where I want it.
bobwaycott 11y ago
Yeah, kb trackpad is pretty much the only thing I knowingly use 3D Touch for. I randomly discovered it months ago, thought it was some confusing but at first, then realized what I'd done. The accuracy has always been slightly disappointing, though. As well as a few other little quirks, like losing its place in long text, getting stuck at the top/bottom without scrolling upward/downward, etc. but overall, pretty handy.
wingerlang 11y ago
It's nice, but it could've been done in software. In fact I've used that on my iPhones since probably 2013/2014.
zimpenfish 11y ago
For me and my stubby wildly uncontrollable fingers, this is worth the upgrade to the 6S almost all by itself. I use this multiple times a day and it's beautiful. (I do use 3DTouch shortcuts as well and they probably save me a whole bunch of minutes over an entire day.)
chenster 11y ago
It's a nice feature. However, I found it's hard to get it right to use kb as a mouse with 3D touch. Sometimes it just wont' register no matter how hard and fast I press down. Very frustrating. Apple, are you listening?
pilif 11y ago
As a person writing a lot of non-english text, I hate this feature with a passion because I constantly trigger it by accident when I'm trying to press-and-hold over a key to get to an alternate letter with some diacritics on it. With my muscle memory, I end up marking parts of the text and overwriting it afterwards instead of inserting that one letter with the diacritics.

themartorana 11y ago

The only time I remember is when I tap a link just a hair too hard and it doesn't open because it went through a fraction of a second of the force touch action. I've never "hated" a feature on the iPhone. I very strongly dislike this one.

macNchz 11y ago
I had that problem and almost turned it off before noticing that you could adjust the pressure sensitivity. At the maximum setting I never run into the issue anymore.
SonicSoul 11y ago
I dislike the 3d touch on the new macbook trackpad for the same reason. i try to move something but it decides to show me a dictionary definition of that word. does anyone use the dictionary that much for this to be the default behavior?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- wlesieutre 11y ago
  You have to press pretty hard to trigger the second click... Once you feel it click the first time, don't keep pressing harder? Assuming you haven't set this already, you can go into Trackpad preferences and change it from Medium to Firm. That'll switch from "you have to press pretty hard" to "goddamn dude, are you trying to break the trackpad in half?" If you're still doing that by accident, you can disable it completely. If anybody has a force meter handy, I'm curious what the actual numbers are on these. EDIT: QuickLook is the more useful function than Dictionary, IMO. I use it regularly.
  - breatheoften 11y ago
    I turned it off on my Magic Trackpad 2. It absolutely breaks drag and drop for me -- nearly 90% of drag and drop operations result in unintentional force click (which never does anything useful)

Razengan 11y ago

Re: a lack of indication where it will work, maybe it will be address in a future device that has an actual 3D display, where some UI elements hover over the "surface" closer to the user, apparent that they can be pushed in deeper. I wonder if Nintendo will implement that in their next handheld. :)

Esau 11y ago

I think 3D touch is a lot like a right-mouse click in the desktop environment, in that there is rarely anything to indicate where you can do it. You basically have to read about it or just try. That said, I don't personally care for it. I also feel that iOS is getting too complicated.

Throwaway23412 11y ago
A right-click equivalent already existed: a long press. 3D Touch is the long press controlled by finger pressure instead of time pressed. It took an already hard-to-discover feature and made it more nuanced (that is, more complicated).
- vrikis 11y ago
  Except when you're on the home screen; long press will let you wiggle icons and force touch will let you get app shortcuts.
  - Throwaway23412 11y ago
    Why couldn't long press do both? Make "wiggle icons" the top app shortcut or something. ("Move icon" would probably be a less silly name.) You don't see how what you just wrote is drastically more complicated to the average user? Tiny differences in time and pressure determines two different features when pressing an app icon.
    - oldmanjay 11y ago
      Don't invoke "the average user" when you only have data on one user. We measure things these days.
- afoxtron 11y ago
  >It took an already hard-to-discover feature and made it more nuanced (that is, more complicated). I would argue that it fixed the long hold, honestly. Waiting for long holds is a total pain. Being able to reach the same level of contextual menus instantly without long holding is a huge source of relief for the user in apps that rely on that kind of interaction.

smitherfield 11y ago

Before I learned the keyboard-trackpad thing, I just used it for that annoying Safari bug where you tap a link and it doesn't open; for whatever reason push-popping it with 3d-touch works.

prawn 11y ago
If it's the quirk I think it is, you can also tap and hold the link and drag down a bit. The link often then activates.

tbabb 11y ago

Cursor navigation with 3D touch is very nice, and a long time coming. Tap and hold the keyboard when typing to move the cursor around.

melvinmt 11y ago

I discovered 3D Touch after watching an Apple commercial on TV, 3 months after I got the iPhone 6s Plus.

PostThisTooFast 11y ago

"there is zero indication where it will work." This is the fundamental problem with Apple in general: the secret UI. Working with their products has become an Easter-egg hunt. Apple is hurtling backward to the days of non-GUI software, when you had to have a template of hotkeys printed out as a strip and placed on your keyboard. It's the very thing Apple used to make fun of IBM for. The G in GUI stands for GRAPHICAL. The fact that Apple has forgotten that, and doesn't get roundly called out on it in every review, is pathetic. Now they're pulling more idiotic crap like removing the headphone jack from media-centric mobile devices, and making a computer with no power jack or video output or proper external-storage I/O; just an outdated USB port. Meanwhile they introduce junk like "3-D Touch." Meanwhile, there's no OS-level support for the vaunted Pencil! It can't be used for text entry! Oh, and year after year, they don't fix this idiotic blunder: http://goldmanosi.blogspot.com/2012/06/will-apple-ever-fix-iphones-biggest.html http://goldmanosi.blogspot.com/2012/06/will-apple-ever-fix-i...

philliphaydon 11y ago

I use the 3D Touch all the time, new email message, quick contacts, preview emails or photos. I love it.