Using Chrome, Firefox, Brave, Samsungs ‘Internet’ app, and every other browser I’ve used/tried on Android:

I’ll go to select some text on a page by long-pressing on it and it’ll select the word I’m touching as well as expand that selection to a somewhat random amount of additional text (usually not following any structure such as selecting a whole sentence for example).

I’ll then go to adjust that selection by grabbing one of the two tabs on either end of it and the moment I do, the opposite tab jumps to a completely random spot on the page vastly expanding the selection, then the whole page scrolls to an entirely different section; Leaving me holding one end of the selection unable to see what was originally selected. I can’t scroll to where I was, and If I let go and just click copy I’ve now copied 90%of the page to my clipboard… Attempting to modify the selection any further yields the same lack of control and just makes things worse.

This doesn’t happen everywhere, but I get these results far far more often than a successful copy+paste. Like just now trying to copy an address from a local transit guide.

I end up having to drop the paste into a notepad app, reselect the bit I actually wanted (if it even made it into the pile of garbage I was forced to grab) then delete the note once I’m done.

This is fucking stupid and I hate it. Rant over. Thank you for listening.

/edit: I don’t have the power to pin a comment, but d3Xt3r@lemmy.world has a great solution: Use the rectangle select tool in androids ‘Edge Panel’ (must be enabled in settings), then press the ‘T’ button to copy text from the area you’ve selected.

  • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nlEnglish
    28·
    1 year ago
    1. Phones are imprecise. There’s a reason Google recommends 48x48 pixels[1] as a touch target. Text on a page is much smaller than that.
    2. Web pages are funky. You can write text as <p>It's gonna be hot today!</p> but in Modern™ Reactive™ Web Frameworks, you’ll end up with <div><div><p><span>It's gonna be</span><span>hot</span><span>today!</span></p></div></div>. Things get much worse when images get involved, or when (SVG) icons get inserted, or when panels start floating over each other, or when someone uses ::before or :;after to add units. Browsers try to make all of this flow like a single block of text, but it’s not easy.
    3. It’s very difficult to detect if you intend to select a floating block to the left, or if you accidentally dragged the selection knob too far over. As far as the browser is concerned, both contain text, even if that text is probably hidden.
    4. Articles get broken up with non-flowing blocks all the time, mostly because of ads.
    5. Have you subscribed to our newsletter yet? Well, regardless, there’s this floating block of HTML that’s ready to strike as soon as you’ve scrolled more than 30% down. No, the browser doesn’t know it’s hidden, that would make it too easy to block!

    My personal solution: drag the text up into view, then swipe up for the task switcher, then use the Google Lens style text selection that’s built into the task switcher to select the text. It’s using OCR rather than browser parsing and that’s generally more reliable (though it makes mistakes with some fonts and is quite suboptimal for battery life).

    [1]: the exact pixel count depends on the DPI of you phone, these are “CSS pixels”

    • Aa!@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      Sometimes it’s intentional. I have seen both of these cases as well:

      • If you copy text, the page secretly adds more text at the end saying "To read more, visit " so when you paste the text, it shares the article too.
      • Some pages seem to interfere with selecting text on purpose. Like once again, they don’t want you copying text, they want you to link the whole article.

      Gotta get more impressions, right?

    • Nighed@sffa.communityEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      Most of those (ignoring 1) are browser problems, not mobile problems. The browser’s handle it fine on desktops (most of the time)

      I guess it’s mostly the mobile size sites doing extreme styling to get thinfs to fit (partly 2). I guess next time I find a bad site I should try it on a shrunk desktop window.

      • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nlEnglish
        6·
        1 year ago

        It’s definitely a software problem on phones, but every browser suffers from it. All of the normal challenges with text selection are exacerbated by the lack of precise cursor control, and the weird reshifting responsive content sure doesn’t help.

        I’ve never had an issue copying text from motherfuckingwebsite style pages. Somewhere between basic HTML and whatever the modern web is supposed to be, there’s a point where text selection just stops working.

    • Darkassassin07@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      TBH my biggest frustration with it is the opposite side of the selection moving (sometimes quite drastically) while I’m trying to move one side:

      Select text from point A to point B, grab point B to move it and point A suddenly moves while you’re holding B.

      Next up is the page moving while I’m holding one of those points. The page scrolls suddenly to a random spot, but I can’t manually scroll at all let alone scroll back to where I was. (trying by dragged to the top/bottom of the screen, the page doesn’t move)

      These two together make text selection a complete lost cause wherever this problem shows up.

    • SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.orgEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      You aren’t exactly wrong, but nearly all of this (besides the precision point) somewhat applies on desktop as well. I think op has a point that what’s happening on android is weird because most browsers don’t flip out when you try and select text on desktop. I don’t think the pointer method’s lack of precision explains it fully.