Gesture.Tap() behaving weirdly, one finger needs to be on screen to receive onStart and onEnd events

[ashkalor]

Description

Hey RNGH developers,

I have been using react native gesture handler for quite sometime now and it's doing an amazing job, However recently I have been experimenting with React three Fiber in an expo react native project.

For the tap gesture, only the onBegin callback is triggered, and no matter how many times I tap, I only receive onBegin events. After further experimentation, I realized that for the onStart and onEnd callbacks to be fired, one finger needs to be placed on the screen before performing the normal tap motion. This triggers the onStart and onEnd callbacks.

Below is my code snippet and a snack link for experimentation.

const tap = Gesture.Tap()
    .onBegin(() => {
      console.log("Begin");
    })
    .onStart((event) => {
      console.log("start");
    })
    .onEnd((event) => {
      console.log("end");
    });
  return (
    <GestureDetector gesture={tap}>
      <View style={{ flex: 1 }}>
        <Canvas
          style={{
            flex: 1,
          }}
        >
          <ambientLight intensity={0.1} />
          <directionalLight color="red" position={[0, 0, 5]} />
          <mesh
            onClick={() => {
              console.log("mesh click");
            }}
          >
            <boxGeometry />
            <meshStandardMaterial />
          </mesh>
        </Canvas>
      </View>
    </GestureDetector>
  );

Hoping to really get this solved, I believe providing support for React Native Gesture Handler with react three fiber will really help in the upcoming days as support for react-native-wgpu is announced and three js already has running examples for using WebGPU and also since its the only library that has both internal and external interaction system in 3D space for react native.

[!WARNING]
Trying to run the latest versions of react three fiber will throw this particular error raised in issue . I would recommend using a real device so that you can dismiss these errors on the error popup screen.

Steps to reproduce

1. Install Expo React native project with React Three Fiber and React native gesture Handler
2. Copy the above code and place it on index file after wrapping your layout with GestureHandlerRootView
3. Test tapping the screen to get onBegin callbacks
4. Place one finger and try tapping again to get onStart and onEnd callbacks (which is not the expected behaviour )

Snack or a link to a repository

https://snack.expo.dev/@ashkalor/authentic-blue-salsa

Gesture Handler version

2.18.1

React Native version

0.74.5

Platforms

Android, iOS

JavaScript runtime

None

Workflow

Expo bare workflow

Architecture

Paper (Old Architecture)

Build type

Debug mode

Device

Real device

Device model

Samsung Galaxy Tab A9

Acknowledgements

Yes

[ashkalor]

Hey guys, Any update on this? Really stuck here. Don't know where to even start debugging from.

[NikitaDudin]

Try to replace first child of GestureDetector with Animated.View from react-native-reanimated library. it should be REAnimated node. https://docs.swmansion.com/react-native-gesture-handler/docs/gestures/gesture-detector/#reference

[leaf541]

I'm facing the same issue, any possible fixes? I already have first child as Reanimated Animated.View.

[TweetyBoop1990]

Has anyone figured out a fix for this? I have pretty much this issue. Everything was working fine while on RN 0.73.6 and then I upgraded to 0.76.2 and now my gestures require a finger to be on the screen for anything to activate (on ANDROID only). What could be causing this?!?

[j-piasecki]

Hey, sorry for the delay - we were looking into this issue but no update was posted here 😅.

The problem here is twofold - threejs/native uses JS responder to handle touches and RNGH has a binary relation with it. When the JS responder is handling touches, gesture handler isn't and vice versa. Which one gets priority depends on which one will activate first. In this specific case, the js responder activates first, so the tap gesture is always canceled.

The other part is that RNGH respects the platform's native touch handling. On Android, this comes down to handling requestDisallowInterceptTouchEvent, which also may be triggered by the JS responder and the only information it gives is that the view should stop intercepting touch events. It doesn't say what triggered it.

We don't really have a reliable way to detect that these two are connected, so we respect both and cancel the gestures if they aren't active yet to prevent breaking the touch handling of JS responder and native Android views.

This is related to more broad category of issues in RNGH which we are still investigating and looking for a good solution. The bad news is that it will likely be a breaking change and require the new architecture.

If you need a workaround for it, you can try disabling the mechanism I mentioned earlier by removing these lines: https://github.com/software-mansion/react-native-gesture-handler/blob/3daca2db4a31c5f960c4ae7a127ace358de7e63e/android/src/main/java/com/swmansion/gesturehandler/react/RNGestureHandlerRootView.kt#L46-L48

https://github.com/software-mansion/react-native-gesture-handler/blob/3daca2db4a31c5f960c4ae7a127ace358de7e63e/android/src/main/java/com/swmansion/gesturehandler/react/RNGestureHandlerRootHelper.kt#L122-L124

But keep in mind that it can lead to problems in other places Gesture Handler is used. If you find any issues while using this workaround I would appreciate it if you could describe them here as it may help us in handling this in a better way.

[ashkalor]

So based on my understanding, correct me If i am wrong - Instead of doing the workaround you mentioned if we port r3f/native to support RNGH instead of the JS responder then we should be able use all of RNGH features with it right? The events system for native in React three fiber is in a way emulated from JS responder system. Am I thinking in the right direction or is there a better way to go about this?

Will this also allow us to nest different gestures inside the canvas?

[j-piasecki]

I believe that's correct, though it would be great to test whether disabling the responder system makes gestures work to make sure we didn't miss anything.

[ashkalor]

I can definitely help but I haven't really worked a lot directly with kotlin or java I am a bit skeptical about putting my hands into that. Based on what you mentioned Do you want me to try disabling the RNGH for the above example and just test with JS responder?

[j-piasecki]

I meant to check whether removing the onPress implementation from r3f makes RNGH work (this should be entirely in JS, though I'm unfamiliar with the codebase). Sorry for not being clear 😅.