How do you detect a SwiftUI touchDown event with no movement or duration?

Question

I'm trying to detect when a finger first makes contact with a view in SwiftUI. I could do this very easily with UIKit Events but can't figure this out in SwiftUI.

I've tried a DragGesture with minimum movement of 0 but it still won't change until your finger moves.

TapGesture will only work when you lift your finger and LongPressGesture will not trigger fast enough no matter what I set the parameters to.

DragGesture(minimumDistance: 0, coordinateSpace: .local).onChanged({ _ in print("down")})

LongPressGesture(minimumDuration: 0.01, maximumDistance: 100).onEnded({_ in print("down")})

I want to detect a touchDown event as soon as a finger makes contact with a view. Apple's default gestures have restrictions to either distance or time.

Update: This is not an issue anymore as Apple has seemed to update how DragGesture works or maybe I was experiencing a specific contextual bug.

must be with the .updating modifier on the TapGesture, but can't figure out how to do it. — Pbk, Jan 23 '20 at 02:43

score 31 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 24 '20 at 14:01

You can use the .updating modifier like this:

struct TapTestView: View {

    @GestureState private var isTapped = false

    var body: some View {

        let tap = DragGesture(minimumDistance: 0)
            .updating($isTapped) { (_, isTapped, _) in
                isTapped = true
            }

        return Text("Tap me!")
            .foregroundColor(isTapped ? .red: .black)
            .gesture(tap)
    }
}

Some notes:

The zero minimum distance makes sure the gesture is immediately recognised
The @GestureState property wrapper automatically resets its value to the original value when the gesture ends. This way you only have to worry about setting isTapped to true. It will automatically be false again when the interaction ends.
The updating modifier has this weird closure with three parameters. In this case we are only interested in the middle one. It's an inout parameter to the wrapped value of the GestureState, so we can set it here. The first parameter has the current value of the gesture; the third one is a Transaction containing some animation context.

@eli_slade this answer should be accepted as the best answer imho — Schiopu Evgheni, Jan 09 '21 at 07:39
Same, the zero minimum distance was the most important thing i was missing while searching for a solution. — Peter Schumacher, Jun 09 '21 at 07:57

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 10 '19 at 06:09

If you combine the code from these two questions:

How to detect a tap gesture location in SwiftUI?

UITapGestureRecognizer - make it work on touch down, not touch up?

You can make something like this:

ZStack {
    Text("Test")
    TapView {
        print("Tapped")
    }
}

struct TapView: UIViewRepresentable {
    var tappedCallback: (() -> Void)

    func makeUIView(context: UIViewRepresentableContext<TapView>) -> TapView.UIViewType {
        let v = UIView(frame: .zero)
        let gesture = SingleTouchDownGestureRecognizer(target: context.coordinator,
                                                       action: #selector(Coordinator.tapped))
        v.addGestureRecognizer(gesture)
        return v
    }

    class Coordinator: NSObject {
        var tappedCallback: (() -> Void)

        init(tappedCallback: @escaping (() -> Void)) {
            self.tappedCallback = tappedCallback
        }

        @objc func tapped(gesture:UITapGestureRecognizer) {
            self.tappedCallback()
        }
    }

    func makeCoordinator() -> TapView.Coordinator {
        return Coordinator(tappedCallback:self.tappedCallback)
    }

    func updateUIView(_ uiView: UIView,
                      context: UIViewRepresentableContext<TapView>) {
    }
}

class SingleTouchDownGestureRecognizer: UIGestureRecognizer {
    override func touchesBegan(_ touches: Set<UITouch>, with event: UIEvent) {
        if self.state == .possible {
            self.state = .recognized
        }
    }
    override func touchesMoved(_ touches: Set<UITouch>, with event: UIEvent) {
        self.state = .failed
    }
    override func touchesEnded(_ touches: Set<UITouch>, with event: UIEvent) {
        self.state = .failed
    }
}

There's definitely some abstractions we can make so that the usage is more like the other SwiftUI Gestures, but this is a start. Hopefully Apple builds in support for this at some point.

score 7 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 21 '20 at 12:39

You can create a view modifier this way:

extension View {
    func onTouchDownGesture(callback: @escaping () -> Void) -> some View {
        modifier(OnTouchDownGestureModifier(callback: callback))
    }
}

private struct OnTouchDownGestureModifier: ViewModifier {
    @State private var tapped = false
    let callback: () -> Void

    func body(content: Content) -> some View {
        content
            .simultaneousGesture(DragGesture(minimumDistance: 0)
                .onChanged { _ in
                    if !self.tapped {
                        self.tapped = true
                        self.callback()
                    }
                }
                .onEnded { _ in
                    self.tapped = false
                })
    }
}

Now you can use it like:

struct MyView: View {
    var body: some View {
        Text("Hello World")
            .onTouchDownGesture {
                print("View did tap!")
            }
    }
}

This works perfectly, and I like the code. But it feels the same as an onTapGesture. — user3069232, Apr 23 '20 at 13:26

score 6 · Answer 4 · answered May 13 '20 at 20:32

Actually, @eli_slade, all you need is this:

LongPressGesture().onChanged {_ in print("down") }

Here's a demonstration app:

And here's the code for it:

struct ContentView: View {
    @State var isRed = false

    var body: some View {
        Circle()
            .fill(isRed ? Color.red : Color.black)
            .frame(width: 150, height: 150)
            .gesture(LongPressGesture().onChanged { _ in self.isRed.toggle()})
    }
}

score 4 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 14 '20 at 03:59

This is a solution to detect changes between states and also the coordinates of the touch (within the Text View in this case):

I added an enum to manage the states (using began, moved and ended for those UIKit-nostalgic)

import SwiftUI

struct ContentView: View {
    @State var touchPoint = CGPoint(x: 0, y: 0)
    @State var touchState = TouchState.none
    var body: some View {
        Text("\(touchState.name): \(Int(self.touchPoint.x)), \(Int(self.touchPoint.y))")
            .border(Color.red).font(.largeTitle)
            .gesture(
                DragGesture(minimumDistance: 0)
                    .onChanged({ (touch) in
                        self.touchState = (self.touchState == .none || self.touchState == .ended) ? .began : .moved
                        self.touchPoint = touch.location
                    })
                    .onEnded({ (touch) in
                        self.touchPoint = touch.location
                        self.touchState = .ended
                    })
            )
    }
}
enum TouchState {
    case none, began, moved, ended
    var name: String {
        return "\(self)"
    }
}

This is nice code too. But it has the same issue. I detects a touchdown, but doesn't report it until I remove my touch, which is the same as a tap. — user3069232, Apr 23 '20 at 13:33
It does detect the touch at the moment, and reports it immediately. I may be missing something in your comment.... I am testing in an iPhone XS with iOS 13 — eharo2, Apr 28 '20 at 16:44
I'll check again. I seemed to me it didn't work until I took my finger off the screen. — user3069232, Apr 28 '20 at 17:46

Tamás Sengel · Answer 6 · 2021-03-06T09:50:45.223

For iOS, here's a solution that detects all gesture states. Using code from Joe's answer under this question.

import SwiftUI
import UIKit

struct TouchDownView: UIViewRepresentable {
    typealias TouchDownCallback = ((_ state: UIGestureRecognizer.State) -> Void)

    var callback: TouchDownCallback

    func makeUIView(context: UIViewRepresentableContext<TouchDownView>) -> TouchDownView.UIViewType {
        let view = UIView(frame: .zero)

        let gesture = UILongPressGestureRecognizer(
            target: context.coordinator,
            action: #selector(Coordinator.gestureRecognized)
        )

        gesture.minimumPressDuration = 0
        view.addGestureRecognizer(gesture)

        return view
    }

    class Coordinator: NSObject {
        var callback: TouchDownCallback

        init(callback: @escaping TouchDownCallback) {
            self.callback = callback
        }

        @objc fileprivate func gestureRecognized(gesture: UILongPressGestureRecognizer) {
            callback(gesture.state)
        }
    }

    func makeCoordinator() -> TouchDownView.Coordinator {
        return Coordinator(callback: callback)
    }

    func updateUIView(_ uiView: UIView,
                      context: UIViewRepresentableContext<TouchDownView>) {
    }
}

Usage

TouchDownView { state in
    switch state {
        case .began: print("gesture began")
        case .ended: print("gesture ended")
        case .cancelled, .failed: print("gesture cancelled/failed")
        default: break
    }
}

Tamás Sengel · Answer 7 · 2021-03-17T05:12:45.133

This is a watchOS-specific answer, because the stuff that's inside the definition of isTouchedDown gets called multiple times in a weird way on iOS. There are better solutions for iOS if you want to run actions when your view is touched up/down, such as my other answer.

Note: The isTouchedDown definition will still fire a couple of times when the container screen appears. A hacky solution to prevent that is the boolean shouldCallIsTouchedDownCode that turns false after 0.3 seconds in the onAppear.

@GestureState var longPressGestureState = false

@State var shouldCallIsTouchedDownCode = false

var isTouchedDown: Bool {
    guard shouldCallIsTouchedDownCode else {
        return
    }

    // use this place to call functions when the value changes

    return longPressGestureState
}

var body: View {
    Color(isTouchedDown ? .red : .black)
        .gesture(
             LongPressGesture(minimumDuration: .infinity, maximumDistance: .infinity)
                 .updating($longPressGestureState) { value, state, _ in
                     state = value
                 }
        )
        .onAppear {
             shouldCallIsTouchedDownCode = false

             DispatchQueue.main.asyncAfter(deadline: .now() + 0.3) {
                 shouldCallIsTouchedDownCode = true
             }
        }
}

score 1 · Answer 8 · answered Oct 10 '21 at 03:15

I already answered this here, but worth posting on this more popular question too.

You can use a hidden _onButtonGesture method on View, which is public. It doesn't even need to be attached to the Button, but it looks better since you see that pressing down effect.

Code:

struct ContentView: View {
    @State private var counter = 0
    @State private var pressing = false

    var body: some View {
        VStack(spacing: 30) {
            Text("Count: \(counter)")

            Button("Increment") {
                counter += 1
            }
            ._onButtonGesture { pressing in
                self.pressing = pressing
            } perform: {}

            Text("Pressing button: \(pressing ? "yes" : "no")")
        }
    }
}

Result:

Doesn't look great as a GIF due to the frame rate, but whenever you press down pressing goes to true, then false on release.

How do you detect a SwiftUI touchDown event with no movement or duration?

8 Answers8

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