Available hooks

‌✊ React UseGesture exports several hooks that can handle different gestures.

Usage

With the exception of useGesture which is a special hook, all other hooks share the same API:

const bind = useDrag(state => doSomethingWith(state), config)
return <div {...bind(arg)} />

• state is an object containing all attributes of the gesture, including the original event. That state is passed to your handler every time the gesture updates. You can find all state attributes in the Gesture state section.
• config is an object containing options for the gesture. You can find all config options in the Gesture options section.
• arg is a custom argument you can pass to the bind function. See this example to see where it can be useful.

About the drag gesture

The drag gesture is possibly the most popular gesture of ✊ React UseGesture. Because of the way pointer events work, dragging might cause conflict with scrolling on touch-based devices. So to signify that your element is draggable and therefore shouldn't trigger the browser scrolling, you need to use the touch-action css property. Read more here.

About the pinch gesture

The pinch gesture is a bit specific because depending on your device input, it might behave differently. On touch devices, two pointers (generally your fingers) allow for zooming and rotating.

But Macbook trackpads also support pinching and rotating in Safari, but because React doesn't support proprietary Webkit GestureEvents, you will need to attach the gesture using a ref, with the domTarget option. To make sure the zooming gesture doesn't interfere with Safari accessibility zoom, you will need to prevent the gesture like so:

document.addEventListener('gesturestart', e => e.preventDefault())
document.addEventListener('gesturechange', e => e.preventDefault())

Also, a pretty unknown feature allows devices supporting wheel to zoom (not rotate) by wheeling and pressing the control modifier key. 🤘 React UseGesture supports it, but to make sure the zooming doesn't interefere with the browser accessibility zoom, you'll also be better using the domTarget option.

About the wheel gesture

The wheel gesture is a bit tricky, due to the nature of the wheel event. In fact, mouse devices such as the Macbook trackpad, or the Magic Mouse have inertia, but there is no native way to distinguish between an actual wheel intent and its resulting inertia. To detect intent, you can use Lethargy and read more about it here.

Handling multiple gestures in one hook with useGesture

useGesture is a hook that allows you to manage different gestures at once: for example you might want to enable pinching and dragging on the same component, in that case useGesture is the way to go.

const bind = useGesture(
  {
    onDrag: state => doSomethingWith(state),
    onDragStart: state => doSomethingWith(state),
    onDragEnd: state => doSomethingWith(state),
    onPinch: state => doSomethingWith(state),
    onPinchStart: state => doSomethingWith(state),
    onPinchEnd: state => doSomethingWith(state),
    onScroll: state => doSomethingWith(state),
    onScrollStart: state => doSomethingWith(state),
    onScrollEnd: state => doSomethingWith(state),
    onMove: state => doSomethingWith(state),
    onMoveStart: state => doSomethingWith(state),
    onMoveEnd: state => doSomethingWith(state),
    onWheel: state => doSomethingWith(state),
    onWheelStart: state => doSomethingWith(state),
    onWheelEnd: state => doSomethingWith(state),
    onHover: state => doSomethingWith(state),
  },
  config
)
return <div {...bind()} />

The config object passed to useGesture has drag, wheel, scroll, pinch and move keys for specific gesture options. See here for more details.

Start and end handlers

As you can see from the snippet above, the useGesture hook allows drag, wheel, scroll, pinch and move gestures to have two additional handlers that let you perform actions when they start or end. For example, onScrollEnd fires when the user just finished scrolling.

Note that end event handlers for wheel, scroll and move are debounced because of the way these events work in the DOM.

Native React event handlers

Imagine you want to add an action when you mouse down on a draggable component. You'll probably be tempted to try the following code at first:

// This won't work as you'd expect
function DragAndPointerDown() {
  const [{ x, y }, set] = useSpring(() => ({ x: 0, y: 0 }))
  const bind = useDrag(({ down, offset: [x, y] }) => set({ x, y }))
  return <animated.div {...bind()} onPointerDown={() => console.log('pointer down')} style={{ x, y }} />
}

This looks fine on paper, but it actually won't work: the reason is that the attribute onPointerDown will overwrite the one created by expanding {...bind()} and therefore the drag gesture won't start.

Fortunately, the hook useGesture supports native React event handlers, and will make sure they are executed on the side without overwriting anything:

// This will work as intended
function DragAndPointerDown() {
  const [{ x, y }, set] = useSpring(() => ({ x: 0, y: 0 }))
  const bind = useGesture({
    onDrag: ({ down, offset: [x, y] }) => set({ x, y }),
    onPointerDown: ({ event, ...sharedState }) => console.log('pointer down', event),
  })
  return <animated.div {...bind()} style={{ x, y }} />
}

Even better, the native handler will be passed the shared state of the gestures, including the original event, and the arguments passed to the bind function.