Swipe to go back only works on edge of screen?

Question

My swipe to go back feature works but only works on the edge of the screen. How can I have it work from anywhere on the screen?

Answer 1

It's actually quite easy to do on the UINavigationController subclass without any intervention into every UIViewController subclass pushed. Also respecting built-in swipe-from-edge state (so when it's disabled intentionally, the new gesture is disabled as well):

import UIKit

class NavigationController: UINavigationController {
    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()
        setupFullWidthBackGesture()
    }

    private lazy var fullWidthBackGestureRecognizer = UIPanGestureRecognizer()

    private func setupFullWidthBackGesture() {
        // The trick here is to wire up our full-width `fullWidthBackGestureRecognizer` to execute the same handler as
        // the system `interactivePopGestureRecognizer`. That's done by assigning the same "targets" (effectively
        // object and selector) of the system one to our gesture recognizer.
        guard
            let interactivePopGestureRecognizer = interactivePopGestureRecognizer,
            let targets = interactivePopGestureRecognizer.value(forKey: "targets")
        else {
            return
        }

        fullWidthBackGestureRecognizer.setValue(targets, forKey: "targets")
        fullWidthBackGestureRecognizer.delegate = self
        view.addGestureRecognizer(fullWidthBackGestureRecognizer)
    }
}

extension NavigationController: UIGestureRecognizerDelegate {
    func gestureRecognizerShouldBegin(_ gestureRecognizer: UIGestureRecognizer) -> Bool {
        let isSystemSwipeToBackEnabled = interactivePopGestureRecognizer?.isEnabled == true
        let isThereStackedViewControllers = viewControllers.count > 1
        return isSystemSwipeToBackEnabled && isThereStackedViewControllers
    }
}