How to differentiate whether a user is tapping the screen with his finger or an apple pencil?

Question

The App supports iPad Pro and it has to work with the Apple Pencil. What I would like to do is to differentiate whether the user is using the Apple Pencil or his finger.

Answer 1

To check if a UITouch is using the stylus touch type in Objective-C:

if (touch.type == UITouchTypeStylus) {
    // Do stuff
}

If you're not handling touches directly, but using a gesture recognizer, then it is a little more complicated.

You could try adding a second long press gesture recogniser and setting the allowedTouchTypes property on each one to recognise stylus or direct touches:

longPressGestureFinger.allowedTouchTypes = @[@(UITouchTypeDirect)];
longPressGesturePencil.allowedTouchTypes = @[@(UITouchTypeStylus)];

If that doesn't work, you would have to add a delegate to the long press gesture, and in the gestureRecognizer: shouldReceiveTouch: method, check and store the type of touch and use this when the gesture action fires.

Answer 2

The UITouch class in iOS 9.1 has a touch property which returns the type:

typedef enum {
    UITouchTypeDirect,
    UITouchTypeIndirect,
    UITouchTypeStylus       // THIS ONE
} UITouchType;