Google TalkBack screen reader provides options for convenient text editing. These include selecting text, copying, deleting or cutting the selection, moving the editing cursor, and proofreading. This guide introduces the basics of text editing with TalkBack. While Samsung’s version of TalkBack should function similarly, this is not guaranteed. The Google TalkBack version at the time of writing is 15.2.
Table of Contents
Moving the Cursor While Editing Text
TalkBack does not have a dedicated mechanism for moving the cursor in text fields. Instead, it relies on the same reading control navigation that it uses throughout the system. With reading controls, you can navigate by characters, words, lines, or paragraphs. To switch between reading controls, swipe up then down or down then up with one finger, or swipe up or down with three fingers. You can also use right and left swipes with three fingers.
To move within the selected reading control—such as moving to the next character—swipe down with one finger. To move to the previous item, swipe up with one finger. While typing, you can set the reading control and move the cursor accordingly. Sometimes, you may need to focus on the text field for navigation to work, either by touching it or swiping to land on it.
To precisely control cursor movement, it is important to distinguish between moving to the next and previous items. When character navigation is selected and you move to the next character, the cursor lands on that character. Pressing delete will remove the character under the cursor, and any new text you type will be inserted after it. However, when moving to the previous character, the cursor is positioned before the character you hear. Deleting in this state removes the character before the cursor, and new text is inserted before the character that was read aloud. Additionally, if you move to the next character and then back to the previous one, TalkBack will repeat the character, but the cursor movement remains as described.
This behavior is consistent across word, line, and paragraph navigation. For example, in word navigation, moving to the previous word places the cursor at the beginning of the word, while moving to the next word places it at the end—just before a space or punctuation mark like a comma or period.
Understanding this method of cursor movement is essential for accurate text editing in TalkBack, as cursor positioning affects text insertion and modifications.
To move the cursor to the beginning or end of the text, set “Actions” as the reading control and choose “Move Cursor to Beginning” or “Move Cursor to End,” respectively. Alternatively, you can assign gestures to perform these two actions quickly.
During testing, I noticed that TalkBack sometimes struggles to keep up when reading characters while navigating quickly, but I am unsure if this issue occurs consistently across all devices.
Text Selection
TalkBack includes a selection mode that allows selecting text for actions like copying, cutting, or deleting. By default, selection mode is activated by double-tapping with two fingers and holding, and the same gesture is used to exit it.
When selection mode is enabled, the reading control is automatically set to characters, but you can switch to a different reading control to adjust the selection granularity. Whether using character, word, line, or paragraph navigation, text is selected by moving to the next or previous item in the chosen reading control. To deselect, use the opposite gesture. For example, if you select a character by swiping down, swiping up will deselect it.
While selecting text, you can change the reading control and continue selecting based on the new setting. Additionally, the “Move to Beginning” and “Move to End” actions can be used to select text from the cursor position to the start or end of the text field.
To select all text, choose “Select All” from the Actions menu. This option is available even when selection mode is not enabled, but performing it automatically activates selection mode. Assigning a gesture to this action is also possible.
Performing Actions on the Selected Text
Once text is selected, several actions can be performed:
- To delete the selected text, press the delete key.
- To replace the selected text, simply start typing or paste some text. The selection will be removed and replaced with the new characters you enter. To paste the last copied text from the clipboard, either select “Paste” from Actions or perform the default triple-tap gesture with three fingers. It is needless to state that pasting does not require selecting text first. When performed with no text selected, the pasted text is inserted at the cursor position according to what was discussed earlier.
- To copy the selected text, double-tap with three fingers.
- To cut the selected text, double-tap and hold with three fingers.
Additional Notes
- Exiting selection mode does not automatically deselect the text. To clear the selection, move the cursor using any reading control.
- TalkBack’s text selection is synchronized with the system, allowing additional actions depending on the app. For example, in Telegram, you can create a link, while in WhatsApp, you can translate the selected text using “actions”.
Proofreading
TalkBack uses Gboard’s spell checker to identify typos and correct them through the proofread feature. While typing or editing text, use the proofread reading control to detect spelling and grammar mistakes. Move between errors using the next and previous gestures (up and down swipes). To navigate through correction suggestions for a selected mistake, use Actions. Double-tap a suggestion to insert it.
It’s important to highlight a misleading inclusion of the “spelling/grammar suggestions” item in the Customize TalkBack Menu settings. While its presence might suggest that it controls whether spelling suggestions appear in the TalkBack menu, this is not the case. Instead, unchecking this item removes spelling suggestions from Actions, making it impossible to navigate through available corrections using actions. Spelling suggestions are not currently shown in the TalkBack menu. If you plan to use the proofread feature to view and apply suggestions, it is recommended to keep this option enabled.
As you navigate mistakes, TalkBack will indicate if no spelling suggestions are available. When using Speech Services by Google as the text-to-speech engine, TalkBack will spell out the suggestions. However, this does not seem to work with other engines, which only read the suggestion without providing its exact spelling.
Another crucial point is that proofreading only works when Gboard is set as the default spell-checking service. On Samsung devices, for example, Samsung’s spell checker is used by default, even if Gboard is the selected keyboard. To change this, open your device settings, go to General Management, select Spelling Correction, find Default Spell Checker, and set it to Gboard. For a step-by-step demonstration of how to accomplish this, you can listen to this audio demo by John Dyer.
Although proofreading is a useful feature, I have found it to be unreliable sometimes. Your experience may vary.
Notes
- All editing-related options, are available as actions. You can access them using the Actions reading control, through the TalkBack menu, or via a gesture if one has been assigned. Some actions, like copy and cut, only appear when text is selected. However, using the copy function directly without selecting text copies the content of the entire text box as it copies the focused item’s text.
- Gestures can be assigned to most editing options except for proofreading, and default assignments can be modified.
- Text editing functions can also be performed using voice commands. For details on the available commands, refer to the relevant section in the Voice Commands guide.
Text Editing-Related Gestures for the TalkBack Braille Keyboard
I haven’t tested editing while using the TalkBack Braille Keyboard, but the fundamentals are likely similar, though with different gestures. There is no selection mode, as it is replaced by gestures to select text portions directly. Below are the gestures for reference (note that gestures involving holding Braille dots can be reversed, such as holding dot 3 instead of dot 6):
- Switch to previous granularity: Swipe left with 3 fingers
- Switch to next granularity: Swipe right with 3 fingers
- Move to previous item: Swipe up
- Move to next item: Swipe down
- Move to previous character: Hold dot 6, then swipe up anywhere with another finger
- Move to next character: Hold dot 6, then swipe down anywhere with another finger
- Move to previous word: Hold dot 5, then swipe up anywhere with another finger
- Move to next word: Hold dot 5, then swipe down anywhere with another finger
- Move to previous line: Hold dot 4, then swipe up anywhere with another finger
- Move to next line: Hold dot 4, then swipe down anywhere with another finger
- Move to beginning: Hold dots 4 and 5, then swipe up anywhere with another finger
- Move to end: Hold dots 4 and 5, then swipe down anywhere with another finger
- Select previous character: Hold dot 6, then swipe up anywhere with 2 fingers
- Select next character: Hold dot 6, then swipe down anywhere with 2 fingers
- Select previous word: Hold dot 5, then swipe up anywhere with 2 fingers
- Select next word: Hold dot 5, then swipe down anywhere with 2 fingers
- Select all: Hold dot 4, then swipe left anywhere with 3 fingers
- Select from current cursor to the beginning: Hold dot 4 and 5, then swipe up anywhere with 2 fingers
- Select from current cursor to the end: Hold dot 4 and 5, then swipe down anywhere with 2 fingers
- Copy text: Hold dot 4, then swipe down anywhere with 3 fingers
- Cut text: Hold dot 4, then swipe up anywhere with 3 fingers
- Paste: Hold dot 4, then swipe right anywhere with 3 fingers
- Move to previous typo: Swipe up
- Move to next typo: Swipe down
- Hear previous suggestion: Swipe left
- Hear next suggestion: Swipe right
- Confirm suggestion: Swipe right with 2 fingers
- Undo suggestion: Swipe left with 2 fingers
To perform any proofread-related gesture, you should first select proofread as the reading control/granularity.
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