The Pinch to Zoom gesture has changed the way that we interact with our phones, but you might not know that this can be done with just one finger/thumb.
I’m not sure when the Pinch to Zoom in and out gesture was first created but the first time I got to experience it was on the original iPhone. This was before websites became responsive and websites were rendering full websites on a 3.5-inch display. Still, viewing a full website on a mobile device like this was far better than how we have been doing it before(which was most text only), but it still wasn’t ideal.
However, it was the Pinch to Zoom gesture that made this reasonable. Even though we had to zoom into a section of the page, it was a much better experience than how things have been done in the past.
This feature works even better when viewing pictures as you can really zoom in and see all of the detail of a particular photograph. As useful as this isn’t, it isn’t always easy to pull off. Not everyone uses their phone with two hands and sometimes we need this type of gesture when we only have one hand free. Sure you could try to finagle your hands in a way to pull this off but you’re only increasing the chance of dropping your phone to do this.
I’m not sure when this alternative to the Pinch to Zoom gesture was introduced into Android but some have suggested that it was around the KitKat release. The idea is quite simple and it involves a gesture that you probably use every day with Chrome.
Pinch to Zoom Gesture
- Double-Tap on the Screen but Hold Your Thumb on the Screen on the Second Tap
- Now Drag Your Thumb Up or Down to Zoom In and Out
Now, this isn’t implemented as a system-wide gesture and the application itself has to support it. For instance, Google has included this gesture in Chrome but it is not working in Firefox. Most people use the double-tap gesture in Chrome a lot as it allows you to zoom into a particular section of the website so that it is easier to read. The idea is very similar to that but instead of lifting your thumb up on that second tap, keep it held on the screen. From here, you can drag your thumb up and down the screen, without letting it go, and you can zoom in and our of the screen.
Dragging up on the screen is the zoom out gesture and dragging down on the screen in the zoom in gesture. So in Chrome you can do this instead of using two fingers to actually do the pinching. This also works the same way in Google Maps as well where double-tapping and dragging up will zoom out and then dragging down will zoom in.
Have you ever used this alternative pinch to zoom gesture before? What applications do you use that has implemented this feature?
