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How to detect long presses using UILongPressGestureRecognizer

Swift version: 5.6

Paul Hudson    @twostraws   

UIKit has a dedicated gesture recognizer that can detect and respond to the user pressing and holding on a view. You can configure how many fingers should be used, whether the user needs to tap the screen first, and how much they are allowed to move their finger before the long press is considered to be a panning movement instead.

To get started, create a UILongPressGestureRecognizer that points to a method in your view controller:

let recognizer = UILongPressGestureRecognizer(target: self, action: #selector(longPressHappened))
view.addGestureRecognizer(recognizer)

That will call a method called longPressHappened(), which needs to be marked with the @objc attribute so it can be called from the Objective-C system.

If you want the user to tap the screen then do a long press – i.e., press, release, then long press – set the numberOfTapsRequired property to 1 like this:

recognizer.numberOfTapsRequired = 1
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Available from iOS 3.2

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