.NET MAUI 11 Ships a Built-in LongPressGestureRecognizer

Until now, detecting a long press in .NET MAUI meant reaching for a third-party behavior, the Community Toolkit’s TouchBehavior, or writing platform handlers per OS. .NET MAUI 11 Preview 3 promotes the pattern to a first-party API with LongPressGestureRecognizer, landing via dotnet/maui #33432.

What you get out of the box

The new recognizer sits next to TapGestureRecognizer, PanGestureRecognizer, and the rest of the family. It exposes four things that matter for real UIs:

• MinimumPressDuration in milliseconds, defaulting to the platform convention (around 500ms on Android, 400ms on iOS).
• A MovementThreshold in device-independent units that cancels the gesture if the user drags beyond it, so a scroll never fires a long press.
• A StateChanged event reporting Started, Running, Completed, and Canceled, useful for haptic feedback or visual pressed states.
• Command and CommandParameter for MVVM bindings, and a LongPressed event for plain code-behind.

Because it hangs off GestureRecognizers, any View that already accepts gestures picks it up without handler changes.

Replacing TouchBehavior in XAML

A context menu on an avatar image is the canonical case. In .NET MAUI 10 this typically required a TouchBehavior with a LongPressCommand. In .NET MAUI 11 it collapses to:

<Image Source="avatar.png"
       HeightRequest="64"
       WidthRequest="64">
    <Image.GestureRecognizers>
        <LongPressGestureRecognizer
            MinimumPressDuration="650"
            MovementThreshold="10"
            Command="{Binding ShowContextMenuCommand}"
            CommandParameter="{Binding .}" />
    </Image.GestureRecognizers>
</Image>

The recognizer dispatches on the UI thread and passes the bound parameter straight through, so the view model stays platform-agnostic.

Reacting to state for press feedback

The StateChanged event is what makes this feel native. Most platform long presses animate a scale or dim the target during the hold, and cancel cleanly if the finger drifts. With the new API that logic lives in one place:

var longPress = new LongPressGestureRecognizer
{
    MinimumPressDuration = 500
};

longPress.StateChanged += async (s, e) =>
{
    switch (e.State)
    {
        case GestureRecognizerState.Started:
            await card.ScaleTo(0.97, 80);
            break;
        case GestureRecognizerState.Completed:
            await HapticFeedback.Default.PerformAsync(HapticFeedbackType.LongPress);
            await card.ScaleTo(1.0, 80);
            ShowMenu();
            break;
        case GestureRecognizerState.Canceled:
            await card.ScaleTo(1.0, 80);
            break;
    }
};

card.GestureRecognizers.Add(longPress);

That single event replaces three platform handlers and a Behavior wired up in MauiProgram.

Why this matters for library authors

Control libraries that previously shipped their own long-press plumbing can now rely on a shared contract. A Microsoft.Maui.Controls recognizer means bindings, input transparency, and IsEnabled propagation already work the way the rest of the framework works, so consumers stop hitting inconsistencies like the gesture firing during a CollectionView scroll or not respecting InputTransparent="True" on a parent.

If you are still on the Community Toolkit TouchBehavior, the migration is usually a one-line swap and a property rename. Check the full Preview 3 MAUI release notes for the surrounding gesture and XAML changes.