How to disable multitouch? - iphone

Question

My app has several buttons which trigger different events. The user should NOT be able to hold down several buttons. Anyhow, holding down several buttons crashes the app.
And so, I'm trying to disable multi-touch in my app.
I've unchecked 'Multiple Touch' in all the xib files, and as far as I can work out, the properties 'multipleTouchEnabled' and 'exclusiveTouch' control whether the view uses multitouch. So in my applicationDidFinishLaunching I've put this:
self.mainViewController.view.multipleTouchEnabled = NO;
self.mainViewController.view.exclusiveTouch = YES;
And in each of my view controllers I've put this in the viewDidLoad
self.view.multipleTouchEnabled = NO;
self.view.exclusiveTouch = YES;
However, it still accepts multiple touches. I could do something like disable other buttons after getting a touch down event, but this would be an ugly hack. Surely there is a way to properly disable multi-touch?

Answer 1

If you want only one button to respond to touches at a time, you need to set exclusiveTouch for that button, rather than for the parent view. Alternatively, you could disable the other buttons when a button gets the "Touch Down" event.
Here's an example of the latter, which worked better in my testing. Setting exclusiveTouch for the buttons kind-of worked, but led to some interesting problems when you moved your finger off the edge of a button, rather than just clicking it.
You need to have outlets in your controller hooked up to each button, and have the "Touch Down", "Touch Up Inside", and "Touch Up Outside" events hooked to the proper methods in your controller.
#import "multibuttonsViewController.h"
#implementation multibuttonsViewController
// hook this up to "Touch Down" for each button
- (IBAction) pressed: (id) sender
{
if (sender == one)
{
two.enabled = false;
three.enabled = false;
[label setText: #"One"]; // or whatever you want to do
}
else if (sender == two)
{
one.enabled = false;
three.enabled = false;
[label setText: #"Two"]; // or whatever you want to do
}
else
{
one.enabled = false;
two.enabled = false;
[label setText: #"Three"]; // or whatever you want to do
}
}
// hook this up to "Touch Up Inside" and "Touch Up Outside"
- (IBAction) released: (id) sender
{
one.enabled = true;
two.enabled = true;
three.enabled = true;
}
#end

Answer 2

- (void)viewDidLoad {
[super viewDidLoad];
for(UIView* v in self.view.subviews)
{
if([v isKindOfClass:[UIButton class]])
{
UIButton* btn = (UIButton*)v;
[btn setExclusiveTouch:YES];
}
}
}

Answer 3

- (void)viewDidLoad {
[super viewDidLoad];
for(UIView* v in self.view.subviews)
{
if([v isKindOfClass:[UIButton class]])
{
UIButton* btn = (UIButton*)v;
[btn setExclusiveTouch:YES];
}
}
}
This code is tested and working perfectly for me.there is no app crash when pressing more than one button at a time.

Answer 4

Your app crashes for a reason. Investigate further, use the debugger, see what's wrong instead of trying to hide the bug.
Edit:
OK, ok, I have to admit I was a bit harsh. You have to set the exclusiveTouch property on each button. That's all. The multipleTouchEnabled property is irrelevant.

Answer 5

To disable multitouch in SWIFT:
You need first to have an outlet of every button and afterwards just set the exclusive touch to true.Therefore in you viewDidLoad() would have:
yourButton.exclusiveTouch = true.
// not really necessary but you could also add:
self.view.multipleTouchEnabled = false

Answer 6

If you want to disable multi touch throughout the application and don't want to write code for each button then you can simply use Appearance of button. Write below line in didFinishLaunchingWithOptions.
UIButton.appearance().isExclusiveTouch = true
Thats great!! UIAppearance
You can even use it for any of UIView class so if you want to disable multi touch for few buttons. Make a CustomClass of button and then
CustomButton.appearance().isExclusiveTouch = true
There is one more advantage which can help you. In case you want to disable multi touch of buttons in a particular ViewController
UIButton.appearance(whenContainedInInstancesOf: [ViewController2.self]).isExclusiveTouch = true

Answer 7

Based on neoevoke's answer, only improving it a bit so that it also checks subviews' children, I created this function and added it to my utils file:
// Set exclusive touch to all children
+ (void)setExclusiveTouchToChildrenOf:(NSArray *)subviews
{
for (UIView *v in subviews) {
[self setExclusiveTouchToChildrenOf:v.subviews];
if ([v isKindOfClass:[UIButton class]]) {
UIButton *btn = (UIButton *)v;
[btn setExclusiveTouch:YES];
}
}
}
Then, a simple call to:
[Utils setExclusiveTouchToChildrenOf:self.view.subviews];
... will do the trick.

Answer 8

This is quite often issue being reported by our testers. One of the approach that I'm using sometimes, although it should be used consciously, is to create category for UIView, like this one:
#implementation UIView (ExclusiveTouch)
- (BOOL)isExclusiveTouch
{
return YES;
}

Answer 9

Pretty much simple you can use make use of ExclusiveTouch property in this case
[youBtn setExclusiveTouch:YES];
This is a Boolean value that indicates whether the receiver handles touch events exclusively.
Setting this property to YES causes the receiver to block the delivery of touch events to other views in the same window. The default value of this property is NO.

Answer 10

For disabling global multitouch in Xamarin.iOS
Copy&Paste the code below:
[DllImport(ObjCRuntime.Constants.ObjectiveCLibrary, EntryPoint = "objc_msgSend")]
internal extern static IntPtr IntPtr_objc_msgSend(IntPtr receiver, IntPtr selector, bool isExclusiveTouch);
static void SetExclusiveTouch(bool isExclusiveTouch)
{
var selector = new ObjCRuntime.Selector("setExclusiveTouch:");
IntPtr_objc_msgSend(UIView.Appearance.Handle, selector.Handle, isExclusiveTouch);
}
And set it on AppDelegate:
public override bool FinishedLaunching(UIApplication app, NSDictionary options)
{
...
SetExclusiveTouch(true); // setting exlusive to true disables the multitouch
...
}

Answer 11

My experience is that, by default, a new project doesn't even allow multitouch, you have to turn it on. But I suppose that depends on how you got started. Did you use a mutlitouch example as a template?
First of all, are you absolutely sure multitouch is on? It's possible to generate single touches in sequence pretty quickly. Multitouch is more about what you do with two or more fingers once they are on the surface. Perhaps you have single touch on but aren't correctly dealing with what happens if two buttons are pressed at nearly the same time.

Answer 12

I've just had exactly this problem.
The solution we came up with was simply to inherit a new class from UIButton that overrides the initWithCoder method, and use that where we needed one button push at a time (ie. everywhere):
#implementation ExclusiveButton
(id)initWithCoder: (NSCoder*)decoder
{
[self setExclusiveTouch:YES];
return [super initWithCoder:decoder]
}
#end
Note that this only works with buttons loaded from nib files.

Answer 13

I created UIView Class Extension and added this two functions. and when i want to disable view touch i just call [view makeExclusiveTouch];
- (void) makeExclusiveTouchForViews:(NSArray*)views {
for (UIView * view in views) {
[view makeExclusiveTouch];
}
}
- (void) makeExclusiveTouch {
self.multipleTouchEnabled = NO;
self.exclusiveTouch = YES;
[self makeExclusiveTouchForViews:self.subviews];
}

Answer 14

If you want to disable multitouch programmatically, or if you are using cocos2d (no multipleTouchEnabled option), you can use the following code on your ccTouches delegate:
- (BOOL)ccTouchesBegan:(NSSet *)touches
withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
NSSet *multiTouch = [event allTouches];
if( [multiTouch count] > 1) {
return;
}
else {
//else your rest of the code
}

Answer 15

Disable all the buttons on view in "Touch Down" event and enable them in "Touch Up Inside" event.
for example
- (void) handleTouchDown {
for (UIButton *btn in views) {
btn.enable = NO;
}
}
- (void) handleTouchUpInside {
for (UIButton *btn in views) {
btn.enable = Yes;
}
------
------
}

Answer 16

I decided this problem by this way:
NSTimeInterval intervalButtonPressed;
- (IBAction)buttonPicturePressed:(id)sender{
if (([[NSDate date] timeIntervalSince1970] - intervalButtonPressed) > 0.1f) {
intervalButtonPressed = [[NSDate date] timeIntervalSince1970];
//your code for button
}
}

Answer 17

I had struggled with some odd cases when dragging objects around a view, where if you touched another object at the same time it would fire the touchesBegan method. My work-around was to disable user interaction for the parent view until touchesEnded or touchesCancelled is called.
override func touchesMoved(touches: Set<UITouch>, withEvent event: UIEvent?) {
// whatever setup you need
self.view.userInteractionEnabled = false
}
override func touchesEnded(touches: Set<UITouch>, withEvent event: UIEvent?) {
// whatever setup you need
self.view.userInteractionEnabled = true
}
override func touchesCancelled(touches: Set<UITouch>?, withEvent event: UIEvent?) {
// whatever setup you need
self.view.userInteractionEnabled = true
}

Answer 18

A Gotcha:
If you are using isExclusiveTouch, be aware that overriding point(inside:) on the button can interfere, effectively making isExclusiveTouch useless.
(Sometimes you need to override point(inside:) for handling the "button not responsive at bottom of iPhone screen" bug/misfeature (which is caused by Apple installing swipe GestureRecognizers at the bottom of the screen, interfering with button highlighting.)
See: UIButton fails to properly register touch in bottom region of iPhone screen

Answer 19

Just set all relevant UIView's property exclusiveTouch to false do the trick.