Sunday, June 21, 2015

Copying Coordinates With Long Press in Compass

John Gordon:

During a recent bike adventure I was frustrated that I couldn’t copy coordinates from either Google Map or Apple Map. I think I used to be able to do that - but no more. Compass.app would show coordinates, but I couldn’t copy/paste ’em. Best I could do was a screenshot of what Compass displays.

Jeremy W. Sherman:

Compass does let you copy out the coordinates: Long-press on the coordinates and hit Copy from the floating menu. Don’t tap - that bounces you to Maps.

This is apparently undocumented, and it’s the first I’ve heard of it. So now we have: tap, double-tap, long tap, force touch, Touch ID touch, and Reachability double-touch.

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We don't have force touch yet. :)
But I expect it will replace long-press among the standard gestures.

Also: why count the home button touches but not the home button clicks?


@Peter I was thinking in terms of what you do with your finger, not the location. So the three kinds of taps also apply to the Home button (Home, App Switcher, and Siri).


Same in phone app, eg. if you want to copy a phone number (not assigned to a contact) that have called you, and you want to do a phonebook check I open up call history, then tap the i-button at the right edge, then long tap the number to get the copy floating menu. Then I just paste the number in the search field on the phone directory homepage.

So the long-tap has been around for a while.


I am always trying to copy text I want with long press simply because that's how it works in text fields, it's actually too bad that many of the apps don't support the action menu.

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