Google is testing a new support feature in its Chrome v89 – touch gestures for cursor control. This is just like the swipe keyboard actions for cursor controlling in SwiftKey, but now working as default in the Android keyboard. It’s also mentioned in the release notes as it’s available for Android 11 and later only.
Touch Gestures For Cursor Controlling
From all the minimal features additions that Google made to Chrome browser lately, swipe on the keyboard for handling the cursor is one. While this hasn’t been officially noted when released, it’s now trailing in the Chrome v89 canary build on Android 11.
One of the flags written in the build notes says, “swipe to move the cursor.” And the explanation for this read as “allows user to use touch gestures to move the text cursor around. This flag will only take effect on Android 11 and above.”
Thus, it’s pretty self-explanatory that Google adds a support feature like the ones in SwiftKey, and lately, in Google’s Gboard. While it’s available in those apps for since long, Google integrates into the system’s keyboard by default, this time, but with Chrome first.
Using this, users can swipe throughout the keyboard (maybe starting with the spacebar) to set the cursor at the desired place. A thing to note here is that it’s mentioned users can try this only with the “text cursor.” Thus, it won’t be replacing the mouse completely while using Chrome.
This is really helpful, as touching the screen with a finger for pointing something can go wrong sometimes, or most of the time. Thus, moving the cursor around by simply swiping on the screen’s non-important part is a blessing. Well, as noted, it’s only available for Android 11 users and in future Chrome versions.
