--- title: Introduction to manual gestures and touch events | daily.dev description: Gesture Handler 2.0 introduces a new 'manual gesture' API that gives developers direct control over gesture activation flow in React Native apps. The post... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/introduction-to-manual-gestures-and-touch-events-ib6li6ocw twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Introduction to manual gestures and touch events | daily.dev og:description: Gesture Handler 2.0 introduces a new 'manual gesture' API that gives developers direct control over gesture activation flow in React Native apps. The post... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/introduction-to-manual-gestures-and-touch-events-ib6li6ocw og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/ib6LI6oCw.png og:image:alt: Introduction to manual gestures and touch events og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Introduction to manual gestures and touch events **[Software Mansion](https://daily.dev/sources/swmansion)** · 6 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Gesture Handler 2.0 introduces a new 'manual gesture' API that gives developers direct control over gesture activation flow in React Native apps. The post explains four new touch event types (TOUCHES_DOWN, TOUCHES_UP, TOUCHES_MOVE, TOUCHES_CANCELLED) and demonstrates their use by building an app with multiple draggable, pinchable discs. The key challenge solved is allowing overlapping full-screen hit areas per disc while activating gestures only when touch points fall within the relevant disc bounds — something impossible with the old declarative API. The solution uses manualActivation on Pan gestures and onTouchesMove callbacks to check proximity before activating. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Bring one-handed gestures to your Wear OS app](https://daily.dev/posts/bring-one-handed-gestures-to-your-wear-os-app-rjlajvcmn) · Android Developers Blog · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Gesture Handler's Touchable: Button We Wish We Had Sooner](https://daily.dev/posts/gesture-handler-s-touchable-button-we-wish-we-had-sooner-escylnapy) · Software Mansion · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [React Native Gesture Handling at 60fps: Debugging Jank on Low-End Android Devices](https://daily.dev/posts/react-native-gesture-handling-at-60fps-debugging-jank-on-low-end-android-devices-am9akm5a4) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#react-native](https://daily.dev/tags/react-native) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/introduction-to-manual-gestures-and-touch-events-ib6li6ocw) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Introduction to manual gestures and touch events","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/introduction-to-manual-gestures-and-touch-events-ib6li6ocw","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/introduction-to-manual-gestures-and-touch-events-ib6li6ocw"},"datePublished":"2026-08-02T07:15:39.212Z","dateModified":"2026-08-02T07:40:45.974Z","description":"Gesture Handler 2.0 introduces a new 'manual gesture' API that gives developers direct control over gesture activation flow in React Native apps. 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