Android: How to handle right to left swipe gestures

Question

I want my app to recognize when a user swipes from right to left on the phone screen.

How to do this?

Answer 1

A little modification of @Mirek Rusin answer and now you can detect multitouch swipes. This code is on Kotlin:

class OnSwipeTouchListener(ctx: Context, val onGesture: (gestureCode: Int) -> Unit) : OnTouchListener {

private val SWIPE_THRESHOLD = 200
private val SWIPE_VELOCITY_THRESHOLD = 200

private val gestureDetector: GestureDetector

var fingersCount = 0

fun resetFingers() {
    fingersCount = 0
}

init {
    gestureDetector = GestureDetector(ctx, GestureListener())
}

override fun onTouch(v: View, event: MotionEvent): Boolean {
    if (event.pointerCount > fingersCount) {
        fingersCount = event.pointerCount
    }
    return gestureDetector.onTouchEvent(event)
}

private inner class GestureListener : SimpleOnGestureListener() {

    override fun onDown(e: MotionEvent): Boolean {
        return true
    }

    override fun onFling(e1: MotionEvent, e2: MotionEvent, velocityX: Float, velocityY: Float): Boolean {
        var result = false
        try {
            val diffY = e2.y - e1.y
            val diffX = e2.x - e1.x
            if (Math.abs(diffX) > Math.abs(diffY)) {
                if (Math.abs(diffX) > SWIPE_THRESHOLD && Math.abs(velocityX) > SWIPE_VELOCITY_THRESHOLD) {
                    if (diffX > 0) {
                        val gesture = when (fingersCount) {
                            1 -> Gesture.SWIPE_RIGHT
                            2 -> Gesture.TWO_FINGER_SWIPE_RIGHT
                            3 -> Gesture.THREE_FINGER_SWIPE_RIGHT
                            else -> -1
                        }
                        if (gesture > 0) {
                            onGesture.invoke(gesture)
                        }
                    } else {
                        val gesture = when (fingersCount) {
                            1 -> Gesture.SWIPE_LEFT
                            2 -> Gesture.TWO_FINGER_SWIPE_LEFT
                            3 -> Gesture.THREE_FINGER_SWIPE_LEFT
                            else -> -1
                        }
                        if (gesture > 0) {
                            onGesture.invoke(gesture)
                        }
                    }
                    resetFingers()
                }
            } else if (Math.abs(diffY) > SWIPE_THRESHOLD && Math.abs(velocityY) > SWIPE_VELOCITY_THRESHOLD) {
                if (diffY > 0) {
                    val gesture = when (fingersCount) {
                        1 ->  Gesture.SWIPE_DOWN
                        2 -> Gesture.TWO_FINGER_SWIPE_DOWN
                        3 -> Gesture.THREE_FINGER_SWIPE_DOWN
                        else -> -1
                    }
                    if (gesture > 0) {
                        onGesture.invoke(gesture)
                    }
                } else {
                    val gesture = when (fingersCount) {
                        1 ->  Gesture.SWIPE_UP
                        2 -> Gesture.TWO_FINGER_SWIPE_UP
                        3 -> Gesture.THREE_FINGER_SWIPE_UP
                        else -> -1
                    }
                    if (gesture > 0) {
                        onGesture.invoke(gesture)
                    }
                }
                resetFingers()
            }
            result = true

        } catch (exception: Exception) {
            exception.printStackTrace()
        }

        return result
    }
}}

Where Gesture.SWIPE_RIGHT and others are unique integer indentificator of gesture that I`m using to detect kind of gesture later in my activity:

rootView?.setOnTouchListener(OnSwipeTouchListener(this, {
    gesture -> log(Gesture.parseName(this, gesture))
}))

So you see gesture here is an integer variable that holds value I have passed before.