How to use your phone more easily with one hand

Sometimes you only have one hand to use your phone. You might be walking your dog, carrying groceries, grabbing a subway pole, or just don’t have another hand available. But since nearly all modern phones have screens that are at least 6 inches diagonal, operating a phone with one hand can be a difficult balancing act.

Luckily, both Android and iOS phones have integrated features that make using the phone with one hand less tricky. You can also use some useful options within each application.

Android has a dedicated one-handed mode that lets you shrink any app to the lower half of the screen for easier access. The method for enabling this mode may vary slightly depending on the manufacturer.

• from settings On a Pixel phone (or most other Android phones), go to System > Gestures > One-handed mode and enable the toggle switch.
• from settings On your Samsung Galaxy phone, tap Advanced features > One-handed mode and enable the toggle switch.

Either way, you can simply swipe down on the screen to bring the top half of the app within reach. Make sure to swipe down near the bottom of the screen, otherwise you’ll refresh the screen regardless of the app you’re in.

No matter what app you use, you’re sure to have a set of fingers and thumbs that make it easier to use Android’s preset Gboard keyboards. There is a keyboard on the screen:

• Click on the four-box icon above the keyboard on the left.
• choose one hand From the pop-up menu.

The keyboard will then push up to the side of the screen. Click the arrow button to switch it to the other side or click the expand button (four arrows) to return to normal. (You can’t get this feature on the default Samsung keyboard on Galaxy phones, but you can always install Gboard on any Android phone.)

It helps if the app shortcuts you rely on most are at the bottom of your home screen instead of at the top. You can organize it manually, but on Pixel phones, you can also pop a row of your most used apps to the bottom.

• Open settings then click Applications > Default Applications.
• Click the gear icon next to pixel launcher.
• tap suggestion and enable Suggestions on the home screen.

If you have a Samsung phone and use Samsung Web Browser, you can also move the URL and search bar to the bottom of the screen. (Oddly enough, Chrome for Android doesn’t currently let you do this, but Chrome for iOS does – go figure.)

• Click on the burger menu (lower right corner), then settings.
• choose Layout and menus.
• enable Show toolbar at bottom and Show URL bar at bottom.

(Note: Some Android phones do not have Show toolbar at bottom Features are listed.

You can find the same option in Firefox for Android: click the three dots (top right corner), then Settings > Customize and select bottom for the toolbar.

If you choose the iOS mobile platform, you can perform many of the same actions as on Android.

The one-handed mode that covers all of iOS is called Reachability. You can find it from Settings on your iPhone:

• tap Accessibility > Touch.
• Open accessibility Toggle Switches.

Swiping down toward the bottom of the screen will shrink any app or system menu on the screen, making it easier to use with one hand. Click the arrow at the top of the window to return to normal.

The iOS keyboard also has a one-handed mode. There is a keyboard on the screen:

• Long press the icon in the lower left corner (it will display a globe or emoji, depending on which keyboard you have installed).
• Click the left or right keyboard layout to pin the keyboard to that side.

You can return to the normal layout again using the white arrows that fill the space left by the keyboard.

As mentioned above, Chrome for iOS lets you move URLs and the search bar to the bottom of the screen:

• Click on the three dots (lower right corner).
• choose settings.
• tap URLthen (at the top of the screen) bottom.

This is the default layout used by Safari for iOS. If it was changed for some reason, you can reset it by Safari In iOS settings, under Tab title.