On Android it often stutters, the cursor jumps across the characters at random speeds, sometimes it teleports sometimes it moves one character at a time smoothly. When you lift your thumb it often registers as an extra motion in an unexpected direction. And this is on a flagship Google phone. And it only allows left-right motion, not up-down.

So even if you know about it. It's more an exercise in frustration than anything.

I know about it, but that's a second action (moving it after tapping), or a more difficult one (moving it all the way there via the spacebar touchpad). Most of the time if a tap would put the cursor where I tapped, it'd already be there.

Edit: I just discovered now that if you long-press on the text to place the cursor, you get a little magnified view and it does let you place the cursor in the middle of a word. So that's probably the most efficient method currently available.

> I'm surprised more people don't know about this feature.

I have an iPad without that feature, and it's maybe 5 years old? I think it's a newer feature.

Also, in the past you could tap and hold on text and it would magnify the view around where you were tapping, but that feature was dropped at some point.

Holding down the space bar on my (Google) keyboard brings up a popup to change the keyboard. Sliding my finger along the space bar shifts the cursor.

I miss my very first Android phone (the original HTC Desire) which had a tiny hole they called an "optical trackball" that worked incredibly well for selecting text.

How is anyone supposed to discover that?

I know about this in Swiftkey, but since I'm using more than one language, this action is used to change languages instead. It's unfortunate because moving the cursor is very useful.

How would they? Apple loves to put useful features that are completely hidden unless you know the secret incantation to activate them.

> I'm surprised more people don't know about this feature.

If only apps and phones had a manual to describe the functionality available...

People don't know about it because it's not discoverable.

I knew it, but I had to be told, and it's not too intuitive

How am I only discovering this now..