Detect Left Right Swipe On Touch Devices But Allow Up Down Scrolling

Have you ever wanted to create a smooth user experience on your website or app by detecting left and right swipes on touch devices while still allowing users to scroll vertically? This can be a handy feature to implement for navigation menus, image carousels, or interactive elements. In this article, we'll guide you through the process of detecting left and right swipes on touch devices while preserving the vertical scrolling functionality.

To achieve this functionality, you can use JavaScript event listeners to capture touch events and determine the direction of the swipe gesture. By combining this with some basic logic, you can differentiate between horizontal swipes and vertical scrolling.

First, let's start by adding event listeners to detect touch events on your web page or app. You can do this by targeting the element where you want to detect the swipe gestures. For example, you can add event listeners to the document or a specific container element.

let initialX = null;
let initialY = null;

document.addEventListener('touchstart', function(event) {
    initialX = event.touches[0].clientX;
    initialY = event.touches[0].clientY;
});

document.addEventListener('touchmove', function(event) {
    if (!initialX || !initialY) {
        return;
    }

    let currentX = event.touches[0].clientX;
    let currentY = event.touches[0].clientY;

    let diffX = initialX - currentX;
    let diffY = initialY - currentY;

    if (Math.abs(diffX) > Math.abs(diffY)) {
        if (diffX > 0) {
            // Swiped left
            console.log('Swiped left');
        } else {
            // Swiped right
            console.log('Swiped right');
        }
    }

    initialX = null;
    initialY = null;
});

In the code snippet above, we use the `touchstart` event to capture the initial touch coordinates and the `touchmove` event to calculate the difference between the initial and current touch coordinates. Based on the difference in the X and Y directions, we can determine whether the user swiped left or right.

It's important to note that we only handle horizontal swipes in this example to allow vertical scrolling to work as expected. You can extend this logic to include additional functionality or customize it according to your project requirements.

By following these steps and customizing the code to suit your needs, you can enhance the user experience on touch devices by detecting left and right swipes while still maintaining smooth vertical scrolling. Experiment with different implementations and integrate this feature seamlessly into your web projects. Happy coding!