How to easily zoom in and out with just one finger (Google apps)

Ever been in a situation where you just can't comfortably have two fingers on the screen, in order to pinch-zoom in and out comfortably? That's basically every time when you are forced to use your phone with one hand – be it because you are carrying a bag of groceries, walking the dog, or whatever else you might be doing. It's an issue present even on smaller handsets, as the gesture just requires one finger too many to be touching the screen, which is not really possible with one hand operation, unless you perform some risky, claw-like maneuvers (and go for an unplanned drop test).

Well, as it turns out, Good Guy Google has built a gesture in some of its apps that allows users to zoom in and out of a page or image, as far as they want, mind you, with just one finger. So far, we've found the feature to work in Google Photos, Google Maps, and Google Chrome (although the gesture does not work in iOS Chrome, only Android).

So, how do you do it? Well, it's that simple – double-tap on the screen as you normally would, but don't lift your finger after the second tap – hold it on there. Now, when you slide your finger down, you zoom in, when you slide up – zoom out. Check out the graphical guides below: