All I can say is that it is kinda cathartic that someone other than me is experiencing this nightmare.
Also, this pages where it is impossible to select any text at all.
this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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Also, this pages where it is impossible to select any text at all.
On android, you can still select text on those pages from the switch apps screen (swipe up from the bottom, hold, then release on Pixels). Found that workaround on accident lol
Whoa, thank you! I can't select text in the Liftoff app, but this one weird trick works.
That seems to be OCR based though. Sometimes when I do it like that I get complete gibberish
Seriously, I thought I was the only person clumsy/stupid enough to mess up on text selection.
I think itβs a pixel thing, but I get around this by going into the app background thing then press βselectβ so the phone can treat the screen as an image with text and just list out the text without any website or browser shenanigans interfering.
Samsung had something similar.
Yep, just use the rectangular selection from the edge panel and you can save it as a screenshot or extract the text.
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This is an awesome tip!
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I really hate that android tries to expand the selection to whatever it thinks is relevant, I don't need selection to be "smart" just let me select what I want to select
So it's not just my phone? It is android? I've had this shit only on my current phone so I thought it was just the hardware. It's not just websites or browsers; it's every fucking app, because the selection thing is handled by the OS.
By God is it infuriating that something so simple straight up doesn't fucking work in 2023.
I've had this issue for years across several devices.
I have however mostly used Samsung devices so I'm not sure if other brands have the same issue. Probably, but I can't say for sure.
I've had this LG thing (V6 Dual Screen) for years; I don't upgrade until my stuff is literally broken. Previous phone was a Galaxy S4. I didn't have the problem when it was new, which is why I figured it was hardware just wearing out. But it could have also just been one of the updates to Android itself.
My last two upgrades have been because of dieing parts. Degrading batteries that I can't be bothered to have replaced and a wifi adapter that just quit working altogether.
I miss my Moto Z2 Play with the moto mods. Extra battery, external speakers, even a fully functional projector to share the screen. That thing was the shit.
Fuck yeah. I hella wanted that thing. It sounded neat and the projector has always since made me question why that isn't a standard thing on every phone the way the camera is? It would be awesome.
Space. The projector just about tripled the thickness of the phone. It was really handy being removable.
I wish more manufacturers tried out the swappable add-on concept. There was lots of potential there.
I really really miss that extra battery letting my phone go 3 full days under heavy use without a charge.
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Because websites are optimized for dummies who can't copy paste.
Yean, I hate it too. The difference to selecting text on a desktop system is night and day especially because with a proper mouse you can shift click the desired start and end points and don't even have to drag.
I've found that zooming in generally makes it more precise but that doesn't help if it means that you now need to scroll the screen because of the zoom. For some reason drag-selecting text upwards also yields better results for me than downwards.
Another trick is to request the desktop version of a page instead of the mobile version and see if it's easier there.
I'm glad it's not just me that finds this.
At this point I just let Android copy whatever, as long as it contains what I want, and then I use the clipboard edit tool that pops up to delete everything I don't want. Extra steps, but way less fiddly.
It happens to me in a lot of apps too, even Liftoff. Is it maybe related to the keyboard app? Which one do you use?
Interesting thought: I've been using SwiftKey for probably 10 years now.
I'm gonna have a play with some others and see if that changes anything. Not sure it will, but worth a look.
/edit: Sigh. Nope. Same results with Samsungs built in keyboard and with GBoard.
The keyboard doesn't pop up during text selection so I don't think that's having an effect.
I thought maybe it was related by way of the clipboard. Guess not.
I used AOSP keyboard for a very long time and now Simple Keyboard, it experience this on both. I think this may be an Android thing.
This, and also putting the cursor into a wall of text, such as between two closed parentheses () in the middle of a block of text. It's always off by 1-4 characters. I KNOW it's fixable because WindowsPhone fixed this in the 2015 era with a six-way keyboard nipple embedded in it's keyboard. It never messed up. I miss it everyday....
One thing that might be Pixel-specific is it lets you adjust the selection after the initial copy, prior to pasting it elsewhere. One thing that may be more universal (maybe?) is copying from the recent apps screen (the one that shows when you swipe up partway and see all open apps) uses OCR so you can copy from anything, including apps that have normally blocked that functionality.
It's the other way round: adjusting is pretty universal, copying from recent apps screen is more specific.
I have neither option with Samsungs A52.
Could probably screenshot and grab text from the image, but that sounds like even more work than the notepad app method I mentioned.
You can just use the rectangular selection tool from the edge panel, and press the 'T' icon to extract the text. No need to save it as a screenshot.
Which selection are you talking about?
Tried screenshoting, but the only options there are to tag the image and to edit it (crop, draw, etc), there are no text extraction options.
It's not in the recents. You need to enable the Edge Panel from the settings first. Then when you're in your app, slide out the edge panel and select the rectangle tool.
You need to enable the Edge Panel from the settings first.
Ah, a rather crucial step. I'd never even heard of the edge panel before, was going off the previous guys response for where to look.
Thank you, that actually works great. It'll be a small issue if whatever I'm copying doesn't all fit on screen, but I can work around that much easier than selecting being entirely broken.
This'll make cropping screenshots faster too.
Cheers!
These used to work so well, and I'm guessing a recent random bug fix broke it.
I've had this problem for multiple years across several devices. If anything it's gotten worse.
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