Re: Split screen?

Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> wrote:

I have an oldish Huawei tablet running Android 9, it has a split screen
mode which I occasionally find useful e.g. to look at details from a
website while watching a video from youtube.
 
I was looking at a review of upcoming Android 16 features, which
mentioned making split screen easier to access on phones.
 
wait! what? ... is that a feature already?
 
Apparently yes, not sure if it's Pixel specific, swipe up from the
bottom to access the normal task switcher (optionally swipe sideways to
pick a different app) then press the app icon at the top of the screen,
select split screen from the menu, then swipe sideways to select another
app.
 
By default you get a bar at 50:50 which you can drag to alter it to
25:75 or 75:25 as you see fit.
 
Probably less useful on the small screen of a phone, but who knew?

I use it quite a bit.  eg for pulling up the calculator while entering the
numbers from another app.  Especially when it's not a straightforward cut
and paste so you'd have to go back and forth a lot[*]

One trick is to put the app you're likely to type into on the top.  Then
when the popup onscreen keyboard appears it obscures the other app, rather
than things moving around every time you want to enter something.

It's not just fixed ratios either, you can adjust to any split.

Theo

[*] I don't know why banking apps block it, because surely copying sort code
/ account number from an email, invoice or whatever is a common thing people
want to do?  Less likely to make mistakes if you can see both on screen at
once.