By Jason Snell

July 9, 2021 12:05 PM PT

Feedback: iPad Mail should provide single-tap paste

Note: This story has not been updated since 2021.

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Please provide a descriptive title for your feedback: Mail toolbar should provide single-tap icon for clipboard paste.

Please describe the issue and what steps we can take to reproduce it:

Mail offers buttons to add photos, take a photo, adjust fonts, scan a document, insert a file, or use Markup — but if you want to paste text from the clipboard you have to find it under a submenu that’s shared with undo/redo.

This makes no sense. If there’s room for esoteric items like “use the camera to scan documents,” why is there no room for pasting text? It’s a task that should not require two taps.

Related: Hiding paste and cut under an undo/redo submenu makes no sense. They are not related at all. I’d recommend hiding as little as possible under submenus, but if you must, please group like items together.

(Note: You may argue that this is easily solved by invoking the three-figure gesture to paste text. If unknowable gestures are good interface design, I recommend removing all icons and toolbars from iOS and replacing them with an entirely gestural interface. [I do not actually recommend this.] But if you think toolbars are a good idea, because it’s nice to have functions available with a single tap, why hide pasting text in a junk drawer designed for undo and redo?)

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