Dealing with iPhone home indicator

Questions
#1

The home indicator (If I’m getting the name correct) is that little bar at the bottom of an iPhone screen that you swipe up in order to return to the home screen. This bar replaced the home button / finger print scanner of older models.

I’ve noticed it takes a few swipes before the indicator reacts to input when running a Defold app. The indicator should take precedence over the game’s input focus, meaning it should respond to input immediately. Every app I’ve used behaves like this, it is only with Defold apps that the problem occurs.

Is this a known issue? Are there ways of preventing this behavior (some xcode setting perhaps)?

#2

In most of the games it controlled by OS and become inactive after you play a bit (the same way as it in Defold games). But applications works in a different way and HomeIndicator is active all the time.

#3

From my experience, it is inactive from the start on a Defold app.
Downwell is an example of a game where the indicator always remains active.

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#4

It’s optional, for example Plague inc behaves the same as Defold games.

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#5

Most of the games that use swipes or taps but on full screen surface use this behaviour, to avoid accidental closing of the game.

#6

Ah interesting, accidental closing of the game is not something I considered.

Regardless, I find it incredibly annoying to have to swipe up 3 times before it activates and I hope there is a way to alter the behavior. I’ll mess around and see.

Thanks for the info!

#7

A bit more info about this topic:

This functionality depends on preferredScreenEdgesDeferringSystemGestures property: Apple Developer Documentation

The screen edges for which you want your gestures to take precedence over the system gestures

Here is this property in Defold:

This property maybe one of the following values:

UIRectEdgeAll
UIRectEdgeTop
UIRectEdgeLeft
UIRectEdgeBottom
UIRectEdgeRight
UIRectEdgeNone

Defold uses UIRectEdgeAll for now.

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