Do you have a device that has a pressure-sensitive screen* or are you using an iPad with an Apple Pencil? If so, you should totally try out the new “Stylus mode (BETA)” from the Quick Settings or Study Settings screens.
Turn your character-writing into your very own piece of art by combining this feature with the “Rawest squigs” mode, and share it here.
This setting can also work while using your finger, but you’ll get a little more control, and it’ll be a lot more fun to use with even an affordable stylus ( Jake’s current recommendation).
What devices are supported?
For iOS, this means any iPhone after the 6s (inclusive) with any aftermarket stylus or an iPad with an Apple Pencil or aftermarket stylus. For Android, this mostly means the Samsung Galaxy Note series with the S pen input. Unfortunately, Android device support for pressure-sensitive input is limited at this time, so an aftermarket stylus will likely not be able to take advantage of this feature. As far as I’m aware, the Note with an S pen is the only mass-market Android device that reliably gives pressure-sensitive input data. I would love to find out otherwise, so if you have a device not listed above and find that it seems to be supported with stylus input mode, post below and let us know!
Let us know what you think. This is a BETA feature, and we’d love to continue to make it better and better.
I believe that Apple dropped the 3D touch technology with the iPhone 11 and 11Pro, and it seems that they don’t plan to bring it back again. I am not completely sure though, it would be nice if you could confirm that.
Thanks for the replies, good to know they (unfortunately) dropped support for it on the latest iPhone models. We’ll make sure to update our documentation. The target audience for this feature is primarily users with the S Pen and Apple Pencil, it was just a happy bug we discovered during development that all our iPhone test devices worked with it too.
Note: Moved/Reposted to new category per Site Admin’s request.
On iPad Pro 11” w/Apple Pencil 2.
I love the thinner lines—it really helps me see my character form sooooooooo much better. I didn’t realize how much the thick “brushstrokes” hid my mistakes.
I dislike how hard I have to push to get any extra line thickness. I do not want to push hard on my screen with the Apple Pencil. Having a “sensitivity gain” button for the pressure vs. thickness would be nice, so I can adjust it to what makes my writing style (speed/pressure) fit.
For the pic below, I was pushing HARD on the Apple Pencil to get those strokes just to be that thick (each stroke drawn in about 1/2 second each).
I did about 100 reviews with the new feature turned on, and everything I “normally” drew looked merely like the “low” pressure strokes in my drawing.
Drawing slowly makes thicker lines with less pressure, but I can’t belt out a couple hundred reviews daily going that slowly.
@Apomixis thanks for the feedback, we’ll tweak some of the settings in a future release so Pencil users don’t have to press so hard.
@Therebackagain I think @Junwei1509 is right. As far as I’m aware, the Apple Pencil only works on iPads. Perhaps a future OS or hardware update will change that. But in the meantime, if you don’t have the latest iPhone (so an iPhone X or below), you should still be able to use a regular aftermarket stylus and take advantage of the mode.
Sorry if the post was a bit confusing. Apple Pencil doesn’t work on the iPhone but you should see variable stroke width just by turning on stylus mode even if you’re just using your finger. Probably not actually ideal for doing writing with your finger, but if you do have a rubber-tip or mesh-tip stylus the pressure sensitivity will work pretty good on your phone.
I bought a pack of these pens from Amazon and I’m loving them for iPhone X character writing.
For me, being able to write the characters with my iPad-Apple Pencil would be a game changer (I would use the app again). My only issue right now: my iPad is big (12.9), so the square to write the characters are huge, so I have to write with my arm (instead of my wrist like I typically would). Is there a way to decrease the size of the input square for iPad users? I even tried to decrease the size of the whole app, without success.
Unfortunately making the canvas smaller is not a feature at this time, but it is something we’ve considered putting in to a future release for the reasons you mentioned. We’re starting work on a design update and answering some larger questions like what landscape mode on the iPad will look like. So I can’t promise anything, but it is an issue we’re thinking about.
I love the idea of this feature, but I want to be able—at least in principle—to be able to make my characters look like the examples, and the lines are not thick enough, and the pressure sensitivity isn’t high enough, to do that. Could you please add thickness and pressure sensitivity options?
If you want an example of this done exquisitely, check out Zen Brush 2 (although of course that app can do much more than Skritter ever should in this vein, trying to mimic how the brush strokes function would be ideal).
I’m with ya. @SkritterMichael and I have spent more time than I’d care to admit dreaming of ways to keep plugging away on canvas updates and improvements to support some stroke variation, calligraphy samples, and more. We’re in the trenches on some other work at the moment, but there is certainly some room to run in the future with some additional customization.
you just need to buy a device in every size ever made and find the one which has a screen size works for you.
I’m habituated to a Wacom Tablet / PC combination, but my iPad mini with a comfortable stylus gets me closer to a more realistic simulation of real world “writing.” Using my phone would probably be closer on that score in terms of the character size being a realistic representation of the size in which I would actually normally write something, but I also probably would not be able to read all the auxiliary material such as mnemonics and sample sentences without my best reading glasses.
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