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Google Maps One-Hand Zoom on iPhone
- calbear81 14y agoInteresting that pulling your finger up is zooming in while pulling it down is zooming out which I guess is supposed to correspond to "+"/"-" symbols. I would think the opposite is more intuitive which is pulling down is moving the camera down from zoomed out position down closer to the map which enlarges it while pulling up moves the camera back from the map which zooms out.
- goldfeld 14y agoI think especially if you think in terms of height the functionality makes more sense as it is. Think of an aircraft where pulling the yoke in your direction goes up and pushing it away from you goes down.
- Evbn 14y agoFYI it is a Maps app feature, no an iOS Maps app feature.
- hkmurakami 14y agoConfirmed that it works on my Android phone (JB, 4.2.2). This is super useful, thanks! (I've nearly dropped my phone several times trying to do a two point zoom with one hand).
- carlsednaoui 14y agoSame here, thanks for confirming that it works in Android!
- snprbob86 14y agoSame here. If it's a nice day in NYC, I'll often opt for a very long walk between meetings. If I stop for a coffee, as I tend to do, I usually try to memorize the directions to where I'm going. Failing that, I have to either put my coffee down for a moment or attempt the dreaded thumb and index finger zoom maneuver. Now that I've written that, I'm hesitant to post it. This is probably the most "first world problem"-ish thing I have ever said. I don't even really rely that heavily on Google maps since I know the major streets in the city pretty well. However, this mini-dilema has really struck me several times. I guess that means life is good! Anyway: Thanks to the guy who discovered this. And extra thanks to the dev who implemented this. I don't know if it's an accessibility feature (limited use of second hand) or a debugging feature (second hand on the keyboard). Either way: awesome!
- bluecalm 14y agoYeah works on my Galaxy Nexus as well. Sweet !
- acchow 14y agoGoogle Maps for Android has had this since September (version 6.12). But in every other way, I'm always jealous when I see GMaps on my friends' iPhones.
- corresation 14y agoWhy? Unless I am completely missing something, the iOS version is a subset of the Android version. The latter is everybit as usable and smooth, with more integration and functionality.
- backprojection 14y agoWorks on my Gnex too. I still find the zoom buttons are best though, they're more 'robust' to use.
- untog 14y agoThis is fantastically useful. Not so much for zooming in- you can already double tap for that. But to be able to zoom back out... brilliant.
- carlsednaoui 14y agoYup, exactly!
- siglesias 14y agoAlthough it is rather unfortunate that it only zooms to the center of the view rather than where you double-tap.
- BadCRC 14y agoit's actually better this way, it's harder to aim when you're double tapping but easy to swipe one area to the center.
- eyuelt 14y agoI think it makes sense to zoom to the middle. Since you're using this with one hand, tapping anywhere other than the area where your thumb naturally rests would be uncomfortable. Also, and more importantly I think, what if you wanted to zoom in to a position near the top of the screen? You would have to tap near the top of the screen and move your finger up, causing your thumb to go off the screen. So you wouldn't be able to zoom in to an area near the top of the screen or zoom out from an area near the bottom. If such a large segment of the screen is unusable for this feature, you might as well just have it zoom to the middle, and make the user center the place they want to zoom to on their own.
- siglesias 14y agoSince you're using this with one hand, tapping anywhere other than the area where your thumb naturally rests would be uncomfortable. Not any more uncomfortable than single tapping any other part of the screen one-handed. Of course this depends on screen size... what if you wanted to zoom in to a position near the top of the screen? Point well taken. Assuming that the content of interest is a good centimeter or so in from the edge, you could map that point-to-edge distance to cover the remaining zoom scale. If it's inside that centimeter, zooming into the middle is useless anyway.
- arb99 14y agoNever knew about this. It'll probably be something that will catch on fast in different (non google maps) apps over the next few years.
- sonar_un 14y agoThis is great, because you know the most annoying feature of google maps? When pinching to zoom, it also rotates. The map not rotating is great!
- thrownaway2424 14y agoIs that on iOS only? It doesn't do that on Android. If you are rotating, you may also zoom, but if you pinched to zoom before rotating, it locks the rotation and you only get zoom.
- Evbn 14y agoRight, but sometimes the fingers rotate unintentionally before zooming (or separate on an arc)
- FPSDavid 14y agoThis angers me more than anything!
- delinka 14y agoHow long before this is considered obvious? Does Google have a pending patent on this? I can honestly say I wouldn't have thought of this.
- mlex 14y agoBrilliant. Wonder how long it is until this sort of thing is standard on iOS (a la pull-to-refresh).
- marknutter 14y agoWorst part about Google Maps for the iPhone: the drawer. Half the time when I pinch to zoom in or out it opens the damn drawer. This gesture is a great alternative but not very discoverable. The drawer should really be done away with.
- qas1981 14y agoWow this is the best find ever! Thanks! I have also found myself nearly dropping my phone attempting to zoom!
- Xuzz 14y agoThink about everyone who doesn't see this post. Will they figure this gesture out? Did you? If it takes a blog post at the top of Hacker News for people here to find this, it's pretty far from discoverable. Is it really that great if most people can't use it? On the other hand, you don't need any instruction for pinch-to-zoom. Intuitive interactions like that — or even double-tap-to-zoom — are much harder to come up with, but they're also accessible to everybody. This is a cool piece of trivia, but it's far from solving the one-handed zooming problem. I hope Google (or anybody else) is working on something to make this better for everyone.
- solox3 14y agoThere has always been a "one handed zooming" solution, but as we see in this thread, people don't see/like those buttons. http://i.imgur.com/TfaGExu.png http://i.imgur.com/TfaGExu.png
- Xuzz 14y agoThose are also in an uncomfortable place to reach with your thumb when holding the device once-handed — and might even be covered by the thumb, depending on how you're holding it.
- LinaLauneBaer 14y agoYou can also zoom in by double tapping on the map. This gesture usually performs a "centered zoom" meaning that the current center of the screen will remain the center of the screen after the zoom has taken place (unlike when zooming with the pinch gesture).
- niggler 14y agoI suspect a great number of people here either don't use iPhones, haven't upgraded to iOS6, or don't use the special google maps app (I'm on 5.1.1 on a 4S, and the maps app that comes with the phone does not do this)
- hnriot 14y agoOr you could be completely wrong. This is hn, not some Amish blog. The hn crowd update their apps, compile their own kernels and don't use old hardware. Life's too short.
- schrodinger 14y agoDoes anyone else touch their nose to the screen and use their thumb to zoom?
- Evbn 14y agoDon't know if you were just playing, but that is great.
- schrodinger 14y agoI was kidding and not kidding at the same time. Sometimes they interfere
- improv32 14y agoI actually do this
- schrodinger 14y agoI just employed this technique to comment to this thread.
- bane 14y agoI've been known to use the nose technique for many phone/tablet interactions.
- robertskmiles 14y agoFunny how things can come full-circle > "On a Stanford or MIT keyboard in raw mode, use of four shift keys while typing a fifth character, where the four shift keys are the control and meta keys on both sides of the keyboard. This was very difficult to do! One accepted technique was to press the left-control and left-meta keys with your left hand, the right-control and right-meta keys with your right hand, and the fifth key with your nose." (http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Q/quadruple-bucky.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Q/quadruple-bucky.html)
- ryanpetrich 14y agoI've seen many answer a phone calls using their nose during winter months.
- shurcooL 14y agoI don't know what to say here other than that I already knew this for a long time. :/ Some other tricks I know but no idea if others know also: - double tap with one finger to zoom in - tap with two fingers simultaneously to zoom out - tap and hold finger over selectable content, then move finger to move selection - shake iPhone to undo typing
- monomaniar 14y agoAnd Chinese best Map APP AMap has done it long ago on all platforms also.
- ck2 14y agoNeat but I sure hope you aren't using this to drive while using your phone.
- jader201 14y ago> Dear Apple, I’d love to see you implement this in Apple Maps. Dear developers, I’d love to see you implement this in any pinch-to-zoom app. Better yet: Dear Apple, I’d love to see you implement this in iOS, so that developers don't have to.
- hnriot 14y agoWhy? They already have a perfectly intuitive way of doing this. It doesn't make any sense. I just tried it and its not particularly useful, doesn't feel anywhere nearly natural and I can already do zoom one handed just hold the phone so that there are two fingers free to pinch.
- tiziano88 14y agoAre you serious? I'm curious to see how you normally hold your phone with one hand now, I'm figuring you as some sort of contortionist, or one of those guys that can cut a deck of cards in half with just one hand. I personally love this gesture, and I use it all the time, especially when it's too cold outside and I'm using my phone with one hand, with the other one in my pocket instead.
- potatolicious 14y ago> "just hold the phone so that there are two fingers free to pinch." Yes, just you try doing this on a rocking bus - it's a pretty effective way to turn your phone into a projectile. Or a train. Or a car. Or...
- eavc 14y agoI first encountered this method of zooming in and out in an Android browser called xScope a few years back. The developer called it "pin zoom," and it was one of the major features he touted. Incidentally, xScope was also the first multi-touch browser for Android. I'm not sure what that dev is up to now, but I like to give him props when this UI technique comes up.
- sahaskatta 14y agoThis has been on Android for quite sometime.
- Brajeshwar 14y agoCool. Ain't it? From a Usability View, it's OK not to have made this through an instruction or tutorial. We were living without it but I moment I accidentally stumbled on it the other day, I liked it. I always believed I was the last one to find it. It's my opinion that these are few of those gestures which are OK to be left as something to be 'discovered'. Just yesterday, my daughter struggled with my Macbook trying to zoom-in on the photos she saw, pinching them, dragging them on the screen. Such gestures and its variations are ones that we have to consider 'should/might work'.
- shurcooL 14y agoAlso, I wonder how many people here realize that supporting this tap-release-tap gesture requires adding a forced delay to tap recognition. After a single tap happens, you can't react instantly because it's not yet known if the user will tap a second time until some threshold time (around 200 ms) passes. Alternatively, something else can gets in the way (e.g. quickly tap anywhere else to "break the combo" and skip the 200 ms tap delay). It's not a big drawback in this particular case (tapping on things on the map makes the pin appear slightly delayed), but it's important to realize the negative effects of recognizing more elaborate gestures.
- mikeash 14y agoIsn't the same delay required for recognizing a simple double-tap-to-zoom?
- afterburner 14y agoWell, it's a tap and hold, as opposed to just a tap, so there's that. If the user simply quickly taps, it's obvious it's not the tap-hold-slide zoom. On the other hand, it's not obvious it's not the double tap zoom, so there's a delay for that anyways.
- sgloutnikov 14y agoI need to double-tap+hold then move up/down to zoom, not just tap and hold.
- chanux 14y agoThis was too good (and not that obvious) I first thought it's an April fool's prank.
- hmottestad 14y agoThat's not very useful. It just zooms to the center of the page. That's not really what I want in a map. Two finger zoom lets you pan around while zooming. So much nicer.
- tsahyt 14y agoIt is useful for people who either lack a second hand entirely or might not have it available for whatever reason.
- kmfrk 14y agoA lot of people have a problem with this as an optional gesture they are welcome to use, if they want. What's the problem here? Should Apple remove keyboard shortcuts, because they aren't as discoverable? I use the exact same gesture in Apple iBooks, when I want to highlight paragraphs, and it saves me so much time and interaction, it's not even funny.
- ceeK 14y agoSo this is what has been making Google maps sporadically zoom! I have been wondering why navigating around a Google map on my iPhone means that it zooms every now and again. I tend to make a lot of fast and small movements which must get interpreted as a double tap and then a drag. Funnily enough, I don't have this problem with Apple maps as I suppose their sensitivity is less.
- shivamantrik23 14y agoI love google and all the nice tricks... but every time something google does, people have orgasm. Samsung Browser on Galaxy S3 has one hand zoom already. In a browser, drag your finger up and down to zoom in or out. I miss it on Chrome on Android. So.. that being said, I am not sure, who is first in implementing one hand zoom, Google or Samsung or somebody else.
- ville 14y agoNokia N900 had one hand zoom back in 2009. Due to lack of multitouch screen the zoom gesture was spinning your finger around in circles.
- timmins 14y agoWhile this gesture may not be intuitive, I have to give credit to the initial stage double tap and then the zoom calibration with the vertical slide gesture. There's another app that has a very similar gesture, Readmill. They allow brightness adjustment with a vertical slide. The downside is the lack of initial gesture to toggle its activation. So, while reading, trying to vertically scroll the page has caused the gesture to activate brightness adjustment. It becomes frustrating.
- atesti 14y agoDo we actually need multitouch? For zooming webpages I always double tap to zoom in and have the Android browser rewrap the page. I figured that I actually don't need multitouch, except for maps. And with this, I could get rid of it and back to resistive sensors for example
- afterburner 14y agoYou can zoom out with one hand using the spread technique...... it's just more awkward (you use your thumb tip and the bottom half of your index finger).
- bitwize 14y agoThis is one of those stupid UI tricks that's really clever and neat -- if you're savvy enough to have already known about it or smart and curious enough to discover it on your own. In other words, it's like an Emacs keybinding. What it is NOT is intuitive. Which Apple's pinch-to-zoom IP is.
- gcr 14y agoI know I'm being pedantic, but Emacs actually has a really nice built-in help. You can call up a list of all active bindings, sorted by mode, and then jump to documentation, and then jump to the elisp implementation. It's like having your own cheat sheet -- something the iPhone couldn't do. ...why am I comparing iphones to emacs?
- mattprime86 14y agoUh... when I downloaded the new update it specifically mentioned this gesture and suggested I "try it myself!" That was months ago.
- mattprime86 14y agoUh... when I downloaded the new update it specifically mentioned this gesture and suggested I "try it myself!" That was months ago.