Hi,
How to enable multitouch on ARView?
Touch functions (touchesBegan, touchesMoved, ...) seem to only handle one touch at a time. In order to handle multiple touches at a time with ARView, I have to either:
Use SwiftUI .simultaneousGesture on top of an ARView representable
Position a UIView on top of ARView to capture touches and do hit testing by passing a reference to ARView
Expected behavior:
ARView should capture all touches via touchesBegan/Moved/Ended/Cancelled.
Here is what I tried, on iOS 26.1 and macOS 26.1:
ARView Multitouch
The setup below is a minimal ARView presented by SwiftUI, with touch events handled inside ARView. Multitouch doesn't work with this setup.
Note that multitouch wouldn't work either if the ARView is presented with a UIViewController instead of SwiftUI.
import RealityKit
import SwiftUI
struct ARViewMultiTouchView: View {
var body: some View {
ZStack {
ARViewMultiTouchRepresentable()
.ignoresSafeArea()
}
}
}
#Preview {
ARViewMultiTouchView()
}
// MARK: Representable ARView
struct ARViewMultiTouchRepresentable: UIViewRepresentable {
func makeUIView(context: Context) -> ARView {
let arView = ARViewMultiTouch(frame: .zero)
let anchor = AnchorEntity()
arView.scene.addAnchor(anchor)
let boxWidth: Float = 0.4
let boxMaterial = SimpleMaterial(color: .red, isMetallic: false)
let box = ModelEntity(mesh: .generateBox(size: boxWidth), materials: [boxMaterial])
box.name = "Box"
box.components.set(CollisionComponent(shapes: [.generateBox(width: boxWidth, height: boxWidth, depth: boxWidth)]))
anchor.addChild(box)
return arView
}
func updateUIView(_ uiView: ARView, context: Context) { }
}
// MARK: ARView
class ARViewMultiTouch: ARView {
required init(frame: CGRect) {
super.init(frame: frame)
/// Enable multi-touch
isMultipleTouchEnabled = true
cameraMode = .nonAR
automaticallyConfigureSession = false
environment.background = .color(.gray)
/// Disable gesture recognizers to not conflict with touch events
/// But it doesn't fix the issue
gestureRecognizers?.forEach { $0.isEnabled = false }
}
required dynamic init?(coder decoder: NSCoder) {
fatalError("init(coder:) has not been implemented")
}
override func touchesBegan(_ touches: Set<UITouch>, with event: UIEvent?) {
for touch in touches {
/// # Problem
/// This should print for every new touch, up to 5 simultaneously on an iPhone (multi-touch)
/// But it only fires for one touch at a time (single-touch)
print("Touch began at: \(touch.location(in: self))")
}
}
}
Multitouch with an Overlay
This setup works, but it doesn't seem right. There must be a solution to make ARView handle multi touch directly, right?
import SwiftUI
import RealityKit
struct MultiTouchOverlayView: View {
var body: some View {
ZStack {
MultiTouchOverlayRepresentable()
.ignoresSafeArea()
Text("Multi touch with overlay view")
.font(.system(size: 24, weight: .medium))
.foregroundStyle(.white)
.offset(CGSize(width: 0, height: -150))
}
}
}
#Preview {
MultiTouchOverlayView()
}
// MARK: Representable Container
struct MultiTouchOverlayRepresentable: UIViewRepresentable {
func makeUIView(context: Context) -> UIView {
/// The view that SwiftUI will present
let container = UIView()
/// ARView
let arView = ARView(frame: container.bounds)
arView.autoresizingMask = [.flexibleWidth, .flexibleHeight]
arView.cameraMode = .nonAR
arView.automaticallyConfigureSession = false
arView.environment.background = .color(.gray)
let anchor = AnchorEntity()
arView.scene.addAnchor(anchor)
let boxWidth: Float = 0.4
let boxMaterial = SimpleMaterial(color: .red, isMetallic: false)
let box = ModelEntity(mesh: .generateBox(size: boxWidth), materials: [boxMaterial])
box.name = "Box"
box.components.set(CollisionComponent(shapes: [.generateBox(width: boxWidth, height: boxWidth, depth: boxWidth)]))
anchor.addChild(box)
/// The view that will capture touches
let touchOverlay = TouchOverlayView(frame: container.bounds)
touchOverlay.autoresizingMask = [.flexibleWidth, .flexibleHeight]
touchOverlay.backgroundColor = .clear
/// Pass an arView reference to the overlay for hit testing
touchOverlay.arView = arView
/// Add views to the container.
/// ARView goes in first, at the bottom.
container.addSubview(arView)
/// TouchOverlay goes in last, on top.
container.addSubview(touchOverlay)
return container
}
func updateUIView(_ uiView: UIView, context: Context) {
}
}
// MARK: Touch Overlay View
/// A UIView to handle multi-touch on top of ARView
class TouchOverlayView: UIView {
weak var arView: ARView?
override init(frame: CGRect) {
super.init(frame: frame)
isMultipleTouchEnabled = true
isUserInteractionEnabled = true
}
required init?(coder: NSCoder) {
fatalError("init(coder:) has not been implemented")
}
override func touchesBegan(_ touches: Set<UITouch>, with event: UIEvent?) {
let totalTouches = event?.allTouches?.count ?? touches.count
print("--- Touches Began --- (New: \(touches.count), Total: \(totalTouches))")
for touch in touches {
let location = touch.location(in: self)
/// Hit testing.
/// ARView and Touch View must be of the same size
if let arView = arView {
let entity = arView.entity(at: location)
if let entity = entity {
print("Touched entity: \(entity.name)")
} else {
print("Touched: none")
}
}
}
}
override func touchesCancelled(_ touches: Set<UITouch>, with event: UIEvent?) {
let totalTouches = event?.allTouches?.count ?? touches.count
print("--- Touches Cancelled --- (Cancelled: \(touches.count), Total: \(totalTouches))")
}
}