HapticGenerator

Easy peasy haptic generation in iOS.

Installation

Swift Package Manager

HapticGenerator supports SPM, simply add HapticGenerator as a package dependency in Xcode 11 or newer.

Cocoapods

Add the following to your podfile:

pod 'HapticGenerator'

and then run pod update in Terminal.

Manual

Or you can just add HapticGenerator.swift to your project manually.

Migrating from HapticGenerator 2 to HapticGenerator 3

HapticGenerator 3.0.0 significantly simplifies naming, but will be a breaking change requiring you to update your app.

In HapticGenerator 3, the line of code to generate a haptic has been simplified:

Haptic.selection.generate()
Haptic.selection.generate(prepareForReuse: true)

Compared to HapticGenerator 2 which was a bit too verbose for no real good reason:

HapticGenerator.selection.generateHaptic()
HapticGenerator.selection.generateHaptic(prepareForReuse: true)

Usage

HapticGenerator now comes with convenience constants so generating haptics is even easier:

Haptic.selection.generate()

Alternatively, if you'd rather create the generators yourself simply create a new generator like so:

let selection = Haptic(.selection)
let lightImpact = Haptic(.impact(.light))
let warning = Haptic(.notification(.warning))

And then generate a haptic like so:

selection.generate()

Optionally, you can tell the system to prepare the engine for (re)use. HapticGenerator has two ways to do this, either after you generate a haptic by setting prepareForReuse to true:

Haptic.selection.generate(prepareForReuse: true)

Or if you know in advance before generating a haptic that you'll need to use it soon (after a screen appears for example), then you can prepareForUse manually:

Haptic.selection.prepareForUse()

Note: Haptics should only be generated and prepared for reuse on the main thread.

Why use this?

Apple's UIFeedbackGenerator subclasses are not difficult to use, but they are messy.

HapticGenerator tidies this up and makes the process of creating different types of haptics on iOS easy and coherent.

See the difference between creating and using generators of different types Apple's way, and the HapticGenerator way:

// Apple's way of using a selection feedback generator:
let selection = UISelectionFeedbackGenerator()
// Generate the haptic:
selection.selectionChanged()

// Apple's way of using an impact feedback generator:
let lightImpact = UIImpactFeedbackGenerator(style: .light)
lightImpact.impactOccurred()

// Apple's way of using a notification feedback generator:
let success = UINotificationFeedbackGenerator()
success.notificationOccurred(.success)

Compared to the HapticGenerator way:

Haptic.selection.generate()

Haptic.lightImpact.generate()

Haptic.success.generate()

HapticGenerator is significantly less code to write and easier to follow.

Furthermore, if you support any iOS version prior to iOS 10, you won't have ugly availability checks throughout your code because it is all contained within HapticGenerator.