The alarm sound list gives back the part of the screen your thumb reaches
On the step where you choose an alarm sound, the list of sounds sat exactly where a thumb naturally rests. Dragging there scrolled the list instead of the page, so the page felt dead in the one spot most people touch it. The list has been resized and repositioned so that band belongs to the page again. What makes this less obvious than it sounds is that the intuitive fix makes one thing worse: the list holds the same number of sounds however tall its window is, so every point taken off the window is a point added to how far the list scrolls before it hands back. Shrink it and the collision happens less often but lasts longer when it does. That trade-off was worked out and chosen deliberately rather than discovered afterwards. The test had to be rewritten too — the version anyone would write first would fail on a correct fix, because the list travels with the page whenever the page scrolls properly. The remaining question is whether the chosen band is where a thumb actually lands, which no simulator can answer, so that part waits for a session with a real phone.
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🔧 Shipped: The alarm sound list gives back the part of the screen your thumb reaches 🧵
On the step where you choose an alarm sound, the list of sounds sat exactly where a thumb naturally rests. Dragging there scrolled the list instead of the page, so the page felt dead in the one spot most people touch it.
The list has been resized and repositioned so that band belongs to the page again.
What makes this less obvious than it sounds is that the intuitive fix makes one thing worse: the list holds the same number of sounds however tall its window is, so every point taken off the window is a point added to how far the list scrolls before it hands back.
Shrink it and the collision happens less often but lasts longer when it does. That trade-off was worked out and chosen deliberately rather than discovered afterwards.
The test had to be rewritten too — the version anyone would write first would fail on a correct fix, because the list travels with the page whenever the page scrolls properly.
The remaining question is whether the chosen band is where a thumb actually lands, which no simulator can answer, so that part waits for a session with a real phone.
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