Customize menu action item

Thank you for creating this amazing package 🚀

I’m currently trying to add custom buttons to the context-menu, because not every emoji reaction should be a separate action menu item. That’s why I’ve made a custom preview render, which renders a small bar with pressables.

However when I try to click it the onPress handles don’t get called. I’ve tried to use onPressMenuPreview instead, however the page x & y position of the pressed item don’t get passed to the event handler, only the generic RNIContextMenuView tag is passed.

Is there any way to either customize an action menu item or make the buttons in the preview pressable?

[dominicstop]

@nandorojo @Flam3rboy hey sorry for the late response haha here are results of my testing ✨

Debug Layout:

(lldb) po self.previewController?.next
▿ Optional<UIResponder>
  - some : <UIViewController: 0x7f7a6f90e100>

(lldb) po self.previewController?.next?.next
▿ Optional<UIResponder>
  - some : <UITransitionView: 0x7f7a73016ab0; frame = (0 0; 375 667); alpha = 0; autoresize = W+H; userInteractionEnabled = NO; layer = <CALayer: 0x600002f3dea0>>

• UITransitionView is internal, not published in the SDK

(lldb) po self.previewController?.next?.next?.next
▿ Optional<UIResponder>
  - some : <UIWindow: 0x7f7a6f90d1e0; frame = (0 0; 375 667); autoresize = W+H; gestureRecognizers = <NSArray: 0x60000265f2d0>; layer = <UIWindowLayer: 0x6000026539c0>>

• Climb responder chain…
• UIViewController (Preview Content) -> UITransitionView (Internal) -> UIWindow (Main Window)

(lldb) po self.previewController?.presentationController
▿ Optional<UIPresentationController>
  - some : <_UIContextMenuPresentationController: 0x7f7a72365200>

(lldb) po self.previewController?.presentingViewController
▿ Optional<UIViewController>
  - some : <UIViewController: 0x7f7a6f90e100>
  
(lldb) po self.previewController?.presentationController
▿ Optional<UIPresentationController>
  - some : <_UIContextMenuPresentationController: 0x7f7a72365200>

(lldb) po self.previewController?.presentingViewController
▿ Optional<UIViewController>
  - some : <UIViewController: 0x7f7a6f90e100>

• This is how you get the parent view controller of the preview

(lldb) po self.previewController?.presentingViewController?.view
▿ Optional<UIView>
  - some : <RCTRootView: 0x7f7a6ef3ee90; frame = (0 0; 375 667); autoresize = W+H; layer = <CALayer: 0x6000028043a0>>

(lldb) po self.window?.rootViewController?.view
▿ Optional<UIView>
  - some : <RCTRootView: 0x7f7a6ef3ee90; frame = (0 0; 375 667); autoresize = W+H; layer = <CALayer: 0x6000028043a0>>

(lldb) po self.previewController?.presentingViewController?.view === self.window?.rootViewController?.view
true

• the preview is being presented using the current window’s root view controller
• Thus, the container view that’s holding the preview content should be one of it’s subviews…

(lldb) po (self.previewController?.next?.next as? UIView)?.gestureRecognizers
nil

(lldb) po (self.previewController?.next?.next as? UIView)
▿ Optional<UIView>
  - some : <UITransitionView: 0x7f7a73016ab0; frame = (0 0; 375 667); alpha = 0; autoresize = W+H; userInteractionEnabled = NO; layer = <CALayer: 0x600002f3dea0>>

• userInteractionEnabled is disabled, enabling it does nothing…
• TLDR: What needs to be done is to become responsible for handling the gestures for the preview controller, but it is not exposed…
• The moment I try to use the private API’s, app store connect might reject it (I can do some swizzling, or drop down to Obj-C to use them)
• So lets try a different approach — I mentioned earlier that the container view that’s holding the preview content should be one of it’s subviews…

(lldb) po self.window?.subviews
▿ Optional<Array<UIView>>
  ▿ some : 4 elements
    - 0 : <_UITouchFallbackView: 0x7fe89f62f8b0; frame = (0 0; 375 667); autoresize = W+H; layer = <CALayer: 0x600002c69fe0>>
    - 1 : <UITransitionView: 0x7fe89d00a320; frame = (0 0; 375 667); autoresize = W+H; layer = <CALayer: 0x600002855620>>
    - 2 : <UITransitionView: 0x7fe89d0837b0; frame = (0 0; 375 667); alpha = 0; autoresize = W+H; userInteractionEnabled = NO; layer = <CALayer: 0x600002c50520>>
    - 3 : <_UIContextMenuContainerView: 0x7fe89d07e6d0; frame = (0 0; 375 667); autoresize = W+H; gestureRecognizers = <NSArray: 0x60000248d7d0>; layer = <CALayer: 0x600002c505a0>>

• _UIContextMenuContainerView is the view that’s holding our preview content (along with the context menu buttons)

(lldb) po self.window?.subviews.first { ($0.gestureRecognizers?.count ?? 0) > 0 }
▿ Optional<UIView>
  - some : <_UIContextMenuContainerView: 0x7fe89d07e6d0; frame = (0 0; 375 667); autoresize = W+H; gestureRecognizers = <NSArray: 0x60000248d7d0>; layer = <CALayer: 0x600002c505a0>>
  

• _UIContextMenuContainerView is internal, so we can’t cast to it… so we search for the view that has a bunch of gesture recoginizer
  • We could filter it via it’s internal class name using reflection (e.g. NSStringFromClass), but referencing internal classes will get out app flag by app review haha

(lldb) po self.window?.subviews.first { ($0.gestureRecognizers?.count ?? 0) > 0 }?.gestureRecognizers
▿ Optional<Array<UIGestureRecognizer>>
  ▿ some : 3 elements
    - 0 : <UIPanGestureRecognizer: 0x7fc6021ae860 (com.apple.UIKit.PreviewPlatterPan); state = Possible; enabled = NO; cancelsTouchesInView = NO; view = <_UIContextMenuContainerView 0x7fc60225ec90>; target= <(action=_handlePanGesture:, target=<_UIContextMenuPanController 0x6000034407e0>)>>
    - 1 : <UITapGestureRecognizer: 0x7fc6021aea00 (com.apple.UIKit.ContextMenuDismissalTap); state = Possible; enabled = NO; view = <_UIContextMenuContainerView 0x7fc60225ec90>; target= <(action=_handleDismissalTapGesture:, target=<_UIContextMenuPresentationController 0x7fc6022068b0>)>>
    - 2 : <_UIContextMenuActionScrubbingHandoffGestureRecognizer: 0x7fc6021aeb20 (com.apple.UIKit.ContextMenuActionPanHandoff); state = Possible; enabled = NO; cancelsTouchesInView = NO; view = <_UIContextMenuContainerView 0x7fc60225ec90>; target= <(action=_handleActionHandoffGesture:, target=<_UIContextMenuPresentationController 0x7fc6022068b0>)>>
    
po self.window?.subviews.first { ($0.gestureRecognizers?.count ?? 0) > 0 }?.gestureRecognizers?.forEach { $0.isEnabled = false }

• Even after disabling the gesture recognizers, the preview content still dont receive any touch events…

---

Summary: interactive context menu’s are still not possible in iOS 15 😔 (if you have any more ideas I can try, please let me know haha, but for now, I’ll be closing the issue — if i find another way, I’ll update this)

Note: I could not find any resources on the internet for making context menu previews interactive, so the following are just based on my tinkering haha

[nandorojo]

Yeah, see renderAuxiliaryPreview