March 2, 2026, 7:07 am | Read time: 2 minutes
Typing texts on a smartphone has long been a part of everyday life for most people. Years of use have made writing generally quick and easy. However, it becomes more challenging when you want to correct a mistake or insert a forgotten word.
Placing the cursor precisely at the right spot can quickly become a test of patience. Even experienced users often struggle with inaccurate positioning on the small display. Some manufacturers recognized this problem years ago and enhanced their virtual keyboards with practical features. Now, Google is following suit.
Apple Leads the Way, Google Follows
Apple has offered a special feature on the iPhone’s keyboard for some time. By holding down the space bar, you switch to a kind of trackpad mode. Most people are familiar with a trackpad from laptops, where you move the cursor with your finger. It works similarly on the iPhone. In trackpad mode, the letters on the keyboard disappear, allowing the cursor to be moved freely and precisely by swiping back and forth on the keyboard surface. This makes corrections significantly easier.
This convenient solution is not entirely new on Android either. Samsung offers a similar feature on its Galaxy smartphones with the One UI operating system. Ironically, Google has yet to add a comparable feature to its own Gboard keyboard. Gboard is the default keyboard on Google’s Pixel smartphones and is also widely used on many other Android devices.
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Trackpad Feature Discovered in Code
As reported by the website “Android Authority,” a trackpad mode has been discovered in the source code of the Gboard keyboard. Although the new mode is not yet officially available, it is expected to function almost identically to the iOS version. It is currently unknown if and when Google will release the update.
The idea is not entirely new to Gboard, though. You can already move the cursor by pressing and holding the space bar, but this currently only works left and right. Larger jumps are therefore cumbersome. With an improved trackpad feature, the cursor should be able to move much more easily and flexibly in the future.