SwiftUI: how to handle BOTH tap & long press of button?

Question

I have a button in SwiftUI and I would like to be able to have a different action for \"tap button\" (normal click/tap) and \"long press\".

Is that possible in Swift

Answer 1

Thought I'd post back on this, in case anyone else is struggling. Strange that Apple's default behaviour works on most controls but not buttons. In my case I wanted to keep button effects while supporting long press.

An approach that works without too much complexity is to ignore the default button action and create a simultaneous gesture that handles both normal and long clicks.

In your view you can apply a custom long press modifier like this:

var body: some View {

        // Apply the modifier
        Button(action: self.onReloadDefaultAction) {
            Text("Reload")
        }
            .modifier(LongPressModifier(
                isDisabled: self.sessionButtonsDisabled,
                completionHandler: self.onReloadPressed))
    }

    // Ignore the default click
    private func onReloadDefaultAction() {
    }

    // Handle the simultaneous gesture
    private func onReloadPressed(isLongPress: Bool) {

        // Do the work here
    }

My long press modifier implementation looked like this and uses the drag gesture that I found from another post. Not very intuitive but it works reliably, though of course I would prefer not to have to code this plumbing myself.

struct LongPressModifier: ViewModifier {

    // Mutable state
    @State private var startTime: Date?

    // Properties
    private let isDisabled: Bool
    private let longPressSeconds: Double
    private let completionHandler: (Bool) -> Void

    // Initialise long press behaviour to 2 seconds
    init(isDisabled: Bool, completionHandler: @escaping (Bool) -> Void) {

        self.isDisabled = isDisabled
        self.longPressSeconds = 2.0
        self.completionHandler = completionHandler
    }

    // Capture the start and end times
    func body(content: Content) -> some View {

        content.simultaneousGesture(DragGesture(minimumDistance: 0)
            .onChanged { _ in

                if self.isDisabled {
                    return
                }

                // Record the start time at the time we are clicked
                if self.startTime == nil {
                    self.startTime = Date()
                }
            }
            .onEnded { _ in

                if self.isDisabled {
                    return
                }

                // Measure the time elapsed and reset
                let endTime = Date()
                let interval = self.startTime!.distance(to: endTime)
                self.startTime = nil

                // Return a boolean indicating whether a normal or long press
                let isLongPress = !interval.isLess(than: self.longPressSeconds)
                self.completionHandler(isLongPress)
            })
    }
}