How to scroll on the iPod touch

How to scroll on the iPod touch
Mac Tip #353, 27 August 2008

The iPod touch, unlike the other models of iPod, is essentially a small computer. It does email, surfs the web, checks the weather, connects with YouTube and Google Maps, and does a whole lot of other things, courtesy of its Internet capabilities.

This means that you often want to scroll through pages of text. Usually you touch the screen and ‘flick’ your finger up, down or across. Flick, flick, flick, and you’ve scrolled down several pages. My screenshot shows I’ve scrolled most of the way down a blog page.

To scoot quickly back to the top the easiest way is to tap once on the menu bar at the top of the screen. In my screenshot that’s the part at the top that shows the wireless signal strength at left, the time in the middle, and the battery status on the right.

Text fields seem a problem at first. For example you may write a comment on a blog. The text box is only a few lines high, so after you’ve written a couple of sentences you can no longer see the start of what you wrote.

If you try the usual ‘flicking’ the whole page scrolls, not just the comment you’ve written.

To scroll inside a text field use two fingers.

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The first screenshot in this sequence shows me typing a reply to an email. Most of what my friend wrote to me is out of view.

The second shows what happens if I scroll with the one-finger ‘flick’. The whole page scrolls and I still can’t see the rest of the email I’m replying to.

In the third screenshot I’ve dismissed the on-screen keyboard (I was having trouble with scrolling with it showing) and have used two fingers to scroll within the email reply text field.

As always, click on the thumbnails to see larger versions of the pictures.