Detect touch press vs long press vs movement?

Question

This code can distinguish between click and movement (drag, scroll). In onTouchEvent set a flag isOnClick, and initial X, Y coordinates on ACTION_DOWN. Clear the flag on ACTION_MOVE (minding that unintentional movement is often detected which can be solved with a THRESHOLD const).

private float mDownX;
private float mDownY;
private final float SCROLL_THRESHOLD = 10;
private boolean isOnClick;

@Override
public boolean onTouchEvent(MotionEvent ev) {
    switch (ev.getAction() & MotionEvent.ACTION_MASK) {
        case MotionEvent.ACTION_DOWN:
            mDownX = ev.getX();
            mDownY = ev.getY();
            isOnClick = true;
            break;
        case MotionEvent.ACTION_CANCEL:
        case MotionEvent.ACTION_UP:
            if (isOnClick) {
                Log.i(LOG_TAG, "onClick ");
                //TODO onClick code
            }
            break;
        case MotionEvent.ACTION_MOVE:
            if (isOnClick && (Math.abs(mDownX - ev.getX()) > SCROLL_THRESHOLD || Math.abs(mDownY - ev.getY()) > SCROLL_THRESHOLD)) {
                Log.i(LOG_TAG, "movement detected");
                isOnClick = false;
            }
            break;
        default:
            break;
    }
    return true;
}

For LongPress as suggested above, GestureDetector is the way to go. Check this Q&A:

Detecting a long press with Android

From the Android Docs -

onLongClick()

From View.OnLongClickListener. This is called when the user either touches and holds the item (when in touch mode), or focuses upon the item with the navigation-keys or trackball and presses and holds the suitable "enter" key or presses and holds down on the trackball (for one second).

onTouch()

From View.OnTouchListener. This is called when the user performs an action qualified as a touch event, including a press, a release, or any movement gesture on the screen (within the bounds of the item).

As for the "moving happens even when I touch" I would set a delta and make sure the View has been moved by at least the delta before kicking in the movement code. If it hasn't been, kick off the touch code.

I discovered this after a lot of experimentation.

In the initialisation of your activity:

setOnLongClickListener(new View.OnLongClickListener() {
  public boolean onLongClick(View view) {
    activity.openContextMenu(view);  
    return true;  // avoid extra click events
  }
});
setOnTouch(new View.OnTouchListener(){
  public boolean onTouch(View v, MotionEvent e){
    switch(e.getAction & MotionEvent.ACTION_MASK){
      // do drag/gesture processing. 
    }
    // you MUST return false for ACTION_DOWN and ACTION_UP, for long click to work
    // you can return true for ACTION_MOVEs that you consume. 
    // DOWN/UP are needed by the long click timer.
    // if you want, you can consume the UP if you have made a drag - so that after 
    // a long drag, no long-click is generated.
    return false;
  }
});
setLongClickable(true);

I was looking for a similar solution and this is what I would suggest. In the OnTouch method, record the time for MotionEvent.ACTION_DOWN event and then for MotionEvent.ACTION_UP, record the time again. This way you can set your own threshold also. After experimenting few times you will know the max time in millis it would need to record a simple touch and you can use this in move or other method as you like.

Hope this helped. Please comment if you used a different method and solved your problem.

If you need to distniguish between a click, longpress and a scroll use GestureDetector

Activity implements GestureDetector.OnGestureListener

then create detector in onCreate for example

mDetector = new GestureDetectorCompat(getActivity().getApplicationContext(),this);

then optionally setOnTouchListener on your View (for example webview) where

onTouch(View v, MotionEvent event) {
return mDetector.onTouchEvent(event);
}

and now you can use Override onScroll, onFling, showPress( detect long press) or onSingleTapUp (detect a click)

I think you should implement GestureDetector.OnGestureListener as described in Using GestureDetector to detect Long Touch, Double Tap, Scroll or other touch events in Android and androidsnippets and then implement tap logic in onSingleTapUp and move logic in onScroll events