In swift, how do I detect when a press begins and end on a UILabel?

Question

I want to be able to detect when a press begins so I can perform an action while it is pressed only, stopping that action when press ends.

I know there is a pressesBegan function on UILabels but I am not sure how to use it and can't seem to find examples.

Answer 1

You can use UILongPressGestureRecongizer.

Initialize the pressGestureRecongizer in the viewDidLoad method of your viewController and add it to the label:

let pressGestureRecognizer = UILongPressGestureRecognizer(target: self, action: "handlePress:")
label.addGestureRecognizer(pressGestureRecognizer)

and then you define the handlePress-function

func handlePress(sender: UILongPressGestureRecognizer) {
    if sender.state == UIGestureRecognizerState.Began {
        // handle start of pressing
    }
    else if sender.state == UIGestureRecognizerState.Ended {
        // handle end of pressing
    }
}