Improve selecting text across page boundaries

SineNomine

Make it possible to easily select text across page boundaries on the mobile app. The Kindle App handles this well.

Find more posts tagged with

Resources

Mobile App

Features

Done

Prayer List

Resource Panel

Status: Done

Comments

unknown

Makes complete sense that this needs addressing.

Dirk Boersma

I received a tip that you can move the text up or down using two fingers, but this is a crutch. Indeed the selection should just stretch to the next page when you move your finger, as in kindle. Much easier!

bdamato1997

So, on mobile, the ability to scroll and highlight at the same time is essential. It's impossible to highlight a passage larger than what's on the screen because the text doesn't scroll as you highlight. Adding this feature would be incredibly useful!

unknown

I used to be able to nudge the screen by scrolling with two fingers. That unfortunately stopped working a while ago, and subsequently I am now only using scroll view. It is less optimal, but quite workable.

Curtis Gordon

Please, please, please fix this.

Jacques LeDee

Great idea...

Roderick Holland

How about selecting verses and sentences by clicking a checkbox or even by naming the chapter and verse range

unknown

Please improve the text selection and copy on the Mobile App and then paste on other App.

Sean McIntyre

Yes, yes, yes

James Clark

yes, on IOS its very challenging if not impossible. it probably can be done, but its as clunky as a car about to fall apart on a back road.

CJ Barth

This needs adressing.

Keith Cavanaugh

Create ability to select text to copy or highlite across scrolling or fixed screens. Please expedite this for next update as it is a basic and necessary function.

James Clark

apple voiceover will change the behavior of your ipad and Plus its for those with visual impairments what I will do is post a video of my screen how this works for me, and heres some notation for you concerning text selection with voiceover, note you may have to use more than one finger to do this. so I have found on ipad anyway that you can select text quite easily, with apple voiceover turned on its one finger at the top of your screen in portrait, double tap, hold for about 3 second and drag to the bottom, that will select the text, it will bring up options for highliting, note taking, copying, sharing and visual copy, if you want to select some previous text, instead of holding double tap and flick down, it'll jump back a little bit then select your text, i can not replicate this on iphone, just ipad. works quite well. https://youtu.be/_fNoyB6AXsA

James Clark

I do have an update, under settings on my phone I was able to turn something off and now I can select text just fine. scrolling view on, swipe to highlight off, smart text selection on, automatic word lookup your choice,

SpirtheoryOfficial

It stinks to not been able to highlight scripture that is not visible. I always have to go into my settings and change the size of the text down to the smallest possible size so that I can see the section of scripture I want to highlight and copy. It'd be so nice if I could just start the highlighting function and drag down to the point where I wanted to stop highlighting versus having to adjust my text size.

Glen K. Curry

Good idea! I often have problems when highlighting cross pages

Jim Dean

This is incredibly aggravating. It’s even difficult in scroll mode.

Ricardo D

For context, I use an Android phone & tablet.

In the Logos ([Faithlife Study Bible] I assume also) mobile app & while using scrolling/flick mode, you lose your selection of text when you let go of selecting text to scroll the page. I find this problematic & annoying if I, for example, want to grab more Bible verses to Favorite, make a big clipping doc from, share it somewhere, or etc. You also can't select text & hold onto a handle moving past what is visible on the screen to add to your selection (like in some text apps or with text on a page in a mobile browser).

Another Bible app has text selection stay selected when you scroll (discovered this is the case in a notes app & probably with other apps/places too). When you scroll, the selection handles disappear temporarily till you stop scrolling & then they reappear for the ability to add or change what you have in your selection. Text selection only goes away when you tap anywhere on the screen (other than verse numbers, which makes a new selection from the verse number). Also, they have a selection menu popup tool & it disappears temporarily when you scroll but comes back when you adjust your text selection with the handles & let go of them. This functionality is awesome! I'm not sure if some of this is related to specific Android os version, but this is something your developers could implement to greatly improve this seemingly basic usability need!

Furthermore, that Bible app also allows you to continue selecting text from the handles moving upwards on the screen (albeit fast & abrupt, going too far from where you would like till you catch yourself & can move back down some).

I did recently come across "Improve selecting text across page boundaries" post for feedback, but I saw that it was made 2 years ago! I wanted this to be a new post (at least temporarily & could later be merged into that one or vise versa) to bring attention to these issues & with some details/suggestions that may have not been brought up in that or other similar feedback posts.

Thank you for reading & considering this in a near future update! God bless you all!

Ricardo D

@Ali Pope @Phil Gons (Faithlife) +others I'm not sure if you guys want to merge my post here with https://feedback.faithlife.com/boards/logos-mobile-app/posts/improve-selecting-text-across-page-boundaries as that one is in the "Need Your Opinion" phase. This post gives some ideas for text selection improvement. This one can be deleted if not necessary since that other one on text selection is in the Road Map (which I hope it moves in the next phase soon).

Thank you for all you do! God bless.

Rick Tuter

When a highlight continues on the next page, Logos desktop treats the two pages as two separate notes. I have to enlarge or shrink the text so I can see the desired text appear on the same page and then highlight it.

Robert Kelbe

This is especially an issue with Android, where scrolling clears your selection. I had to buy an iPhone just to make Logos more usable with selecting text, but I do miss Android!

Anderson Abreu

This has always been a problem for me and a serious flaw of Logos. Every reading app has the ability to bookmark/select between pages, but Logos hasn't had something this elementary for years.

Dan Hall

OliveTree has this right. I select a verse and one of the options in the pop-up window is a plus button to add proceeding verses to the selection.

Gabriel Stutzman

It seems that when I try to select more than page of text on android, I am not able to pull against the edge of the page and scroll to select more text.

J. Nickel

Yes, that would be great!!! I is not very comfortable to highlight, if I cannot mark a longer passage on the go!

J. Nickel

Yes, that would be great!!! I is not very comfortable to highlight, if I cannot mark a longer passage on the go!

Dan Hall

This VERY MUCH needs improving. Consider looking at how Olive Tree does this. When you click on a verse it selects all the verse, like Logos iOS does. BUT at that point, there is an up and down arrow on the side that if I click the down arrow it selects the following verse as well, then each time I click that down button it adds a verse to the selection. If you click the up arrow it reduces the selection by a verse.

Robert Kelbe

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1328241#Comment_1328241

@Robert Kelbe Please fix this... I want to go back to Android, but can't until this issue is resolved...

Anderson Abreu

It's incredible how even today Logos Mobile doesn't allow you to select texts larger than what is shown on the device's screen.

unknown

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1328258#Comment_1328258

@Anderson Abreu I know, this is so frustrating

unknown

Even my weather app allows scrolling while highlighting text!

J. Nickel

Yes, very much needed. Present function also glitchy. It would be very useful, as I like marking on the go, while listening to a book.

unknown

it's funny, it says need your opinion and this is over three years old. Get with it. That's my opinion. People spend thousands of dollars, yes thousands and the mobile app is like it's been designed by grade threes. The web app is phenomenal. The mobile app is pathetic considering what it could be. Do you not have a staff that works on the mobile app or is it an afterthought. Continuous scrolling when selecting text isn't rocket science. Please fix it. A lot of my use is on mobile. Rant over.

Adalberto Inoa

I came here to add this exact request! This is something that I find myself doing very often and it's very upsetting that I can't highlight and copy a big paragraph. We urgently need an improvement on this! I often go to the YouVersion Bible app to copy and share big portions of the Bible because I can't do it in Logos, just because YouVersion app has this feature working flawlessly and logos don't.

Cy Moehl

Dragging to select text stops at the edge of the screen, limiting the ability to select longer passages than what fit on the display. Please add an auto-scroll feature while selection mode is active. A more manual alternative would be to not immediately clear the selection on the next touch, allowing the user to scroll and grab the selection handles to expand the region.

Michael S. Buckley

I saw another post mentioning a similar issue with selecting for highlighting. Perhaps someone in Logos support could merge these similar posts, as essentially it would be the same underlying software to make both selection or highlighting continuation past the current viewable screen possible. The two common solutions to this in other apps (which I would believe would work here) is to either recognize when a dragging motion has been continued to the bottom of the screen and held, the screen is then advanced incrementally to allow for time for the end user to process what is on the screen and then advances further until the finger (or stylus depending on device/user preference) is lifted or to simulate a mouse scroll wheel effect and continue progression through the resource (there may be pros and cons to each approach; however I feel that the general community would appreciate either approach at this point).

The reason why, I believe, this should be considered a priority improvement is that aside from personal/academic/pastoral study, the next most important ability for a believer to use this software is at church, and where individuals, such as myself, may like to use our default notetaking apps (e.g. samsung notes, apple notes, etc.) the ability to be able to take the whole block of text being read and import it into our notes is a major use-case application. My current solution is to scroll select to the end of where I can currently see, copy/paste to notes and then return and capture the next portion (however this takes more time and detracts from the ability to listen to the sermon as effectively as could otherwise be possible).

Thanks to the original poster for their post on this feedback.

Robert Kelbe

On a small phone screen (especially with the new Insights Menu which takes up half the screen and stays on by default!) I often NEED to select a sentence or paragraph that is too big to fit in the screen and runs off the screen, whether it would be to:

Add a highlight
Copy text
Etc.

To do that, I would need to make an initial selection, scroll, drag the selection handles, scroll, drag the selection handles, etc.

This works perfectly in iOS (and virtually every other app on every OS). The problem is that with Logos on Android, scrolling clears the selection handles, which means that I am always limited with what I can select to what is initially in view.

This is a major limitation, and I can't imagine I am the only one to think so. It made Logos completely unusable for me on Android, due to the number of times I needed to select something larger than the screen. For this reason, I had to switch to using an iPhone, and every day I wish I could go back to Android, were it not for this flaw with Logos.

I believe I have brought this up multiple times, in emails and perhaps on the forums; I can't find it on the forums if I did. In 2019, you wrote, "This is a known and reported issue. This has report has been sent to our development team and they have are now working hard to create a fix." I thought I was told at one point something like "Android (as an operating system) doesn't allow this". I don't believe that—I think you can figure it out!

With improvements like adding sermon builder to Android tablets, I want to move back to Android again. Please address this very basic and very important issue.

Thanks for considering.

Robert Kelbe

I see you moved my suggestion (above) with this suggestion and it is now “in progress”. I am thrilled! Can’t wait to get an Android phone again soon!

Wiley Swift

This seriously defeats the purpose of the app. The reason I purchased Logos was to streamline my Study, lesson and sermon prep time. To use Logos to its fullest I understand the desktop will usually offer more functionality. However, in our current era mobile devices are the go to for a growing majority of us. This issue should have been fixed long ago.

This is not a crazy request. This is a basic function of, well, every text manipulation app or program I can think of... So why are we still struggling with this Years down the road? I get that AI is the newest thing and everyone has to rush to integrate it into their platform, now that we have that(a feature I do not appreciate or use knowingly on any platform) Could we possibly fix this basic issue? This defeats on the fly note taking and passage highlighting.

Many on here myself included are being forced to use a FREE program to select Biblical text for utilization while paying to subscribe to a program that promises to integrate all of our search and study resources into one platform. This undermines your marketing by the way. When you advertise for upcoming amazing features I always think, "You mean like text selection?? I will be able to highlight words on the digital page?!"

I purchased ten, I signed up for your newest income generating model of the subscription service. Could we possibly get this basic need met? I assure you it would go along way towards making myself at least (and possible quite a few others) feel both heard and appreciated as loyal subscribers.

Anderson Abreu

I recently noticed that this improvement has been implemented in the Android mobile app. Now I can copy more text than what is displayed in the window.