Google Chrome for Android is getting improved cursor control, similar to other apps on Android. This will allow us to move the text cursor around using touch gestures.

Swipe to move cursor

This is a bit tricky to explain. So I’ll borrow the introduction text from the design document:

“In the editable area inside of WebView and Chrome for Android, currently, the only way to move the insertion cursor is to trigger a teardrop handle first and then move the teardrop handle. On Android, there is a newly introduced way in TextView, with that, we could place the cursor when we start to drag horizontally and also move the cursor by dragging the cursor. We want to have the same functionality to be on par with the rest of the Android platform.”

Here is how it looks like now:

Here is how this would look like; a GIF from Google Keep app:

The Flag

Google is preparing this feature for the Android version of Chrome. We should soon see this on the Canary channel. Here is the flag to watch out for:

“Swipe to move cursor: Allows user to use touch gestures to move the text cursor around.”

If you are someone who does a lot of text editing on the mobile, (think writing and replying to emails using Gmail, etc), this feature will definitely come in handy.

As usual, it will take several weeks before we see this feature in action. We shall update this article when this feature becomes available.

Source: Chromium Gerrit and bugs.chromium.org.