3 finger quadruple tap

By peter, 28 May, 2015

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

I just came across this using my iPhone 6 running iOS 8.3 with VoiceOver and thought it might be of interest to some.

A 3 finger quadruple tap apparently will copy the last spoken text to the clipboard.

could be useful. I never knew of this gesture and thought I would share it with folks.

--Pete

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Comments

By KE7ZUM on Monday, May 25, 2015 - 05:09

yeah. I knew of this for about a year now. In fact you could have found out about this sooner by invoking the vo help with a 4 finger double tap and doing a lot of the gestures. That one is in there.

By Betsy on Monday, May 25, 2015 - 05:09

On my iPad Air 1 I would love to be able to do this but when I triple tap with three fingers I get speech off . I read that the gesture won't work if zoom is enabled but when I turn off zoom it still doesn't work.

By Chris Norman on Monday, May 25, 2015 - 05:09

Hi,
With thee fingers, the following applies (add 1 if you're using Zoom as well):
1 tap - read the current position (page number eat).
2 taps: turn speech on or off.
3 taps: Turn the screen curtain on and off.
4 taps: Copy the last spoken phrase to the pasteboard, including any VoiceOver hints or whatever.

So it's 4 taps you want, not 3 Betsy.

HTH.

By Betsy on Monday, May 25, 2015 - 05:09

In reply to by Chris Norman

With zoom running a three finger tfour-tap gives me screen curtain. A three finger five-tap seems to do nothing. After Voiceover reads a paragraph I go to Notes and try to paste but what gets pasted is a link I copied this morning.

By Betsy on Monday, May 25, 2015 - 05:09

In reply to by Chris Norman

I should have said it better - if after Voiceover reads a paragraph and I then tap three fingers five times then go try to paste the paragraph, the paragraph is not pasted. This is with Zoom running. I then went to settings and turned Zoom off and tapping three fingers four times did work. But I like to keep Zoom on so probably will not use this handy function often. Thanks for your help.

By KE7ZUM on Monday, May 25, 2015 - 05:09

It's a 3 finger quad tap. And you don't have to let the paragraph finish reading.
so tap the scren with 3 fingers 4 times rapidally, almost like the CW simble for h.

Take care.

By dvdmth on Monday, May 25, 2015 - 05:09

This gesture does not work unless Zoom is turned off.

With zoom on:
1 tap = more info about focused item
2 taps = toggle zoom
3 taps = toggle speech
4 taps = toggle screen curtain

With zoom off:
1 tap = more info about focused item
2 taps = toggle speech
3 taps = toggle screen curtain
4 taps = copy last spoken phrase to clipboard

Doing a three-finger tap five times does nothing, regardless of whether or not zoom is enabled.

With a Bluetooth keyboard, you can copy the last spoken phrase by pressing Control-Option-Shift-C, just like on the Mac.