[android] fix talkback on pressable by akwasniewski · Pull Request #4017 · software-mansion/react-native-gesture-handler

akwasniewski · 2026-03-06T12:09:54Z

Description

When TalkBack is activated, pressable cannot be clicked on android. This PR fixes the issue.

The reason was that Pressable requires a specific order of events. This order of events is hardcoded and found empirically. However, with talback enabled the order of events is different, I added a module function which queries native side whether or not talback is enabled and adjusts expected event order accordingly.
Moreover with talback enabled longPress gets both onPointerUp and onPointerDown before native side receives its events, thus we must not reset the state machine state on onPointerUp.

Test plan

Tested on the following example:

Details

import React from 'react';
import { Text, StyleSheet, View } from 'react-native';
import { Pressable, GestureHandlerRootView } from 'react-native-gesture-handler'

const PressableExample = () => {
  const [count, setCount] = React.useState(0);
  return (
    <GestureHandlerRootView style={styles.container}>
      <Pressable onPress={() => setCount((c) => c + 1)}>
        <View style={styles.pressable}>
          <Text>{count}</Text>
        </View>
      </Pressable>
    </GestureHandlerRootView >
  );
};

const styles = StyleSheet.create({
  container: {
    flex: 1,
    justifyContent: 'center',
    alignItems: 'center',
  },
  pressable: {
    alignItems: 'center', justifyContent: 'center', backgroundColor: 'green', width: 100, height: 100
  },
  wrapperCustom: {
    borderRadius: 8,
    padding: 16,
    minWidth: 150,
    alignItems: 'center',
  },
  text: {
    fontSize: 18,
    color: 'white',
    fontWeight: '600',
  },
});

export default PressableExample;

Copilot

Pull request overview

Fixes Android TalkBack interactions with Pressable by adapting the internal Pressable state machine to the different event ordering produced when accessibility services are active.

Changes:

Added a new native module API (isAccessibilityEnabled) to detect accessibility state from JS.
Adjusted Android Pressable state machine event ordering when accessibility is enabled.
Prevented an Android-only state-machine reset on onTouchesUp when accessibility is enabled (to avoid breaking long-press flows under TalkBack).

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 5 out of 5 changed files in this pull request and generated 5 comments.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
packages/react-native-gesture-handler/src/v3/components/Pressable.tsx	Skips the Android `onTouchesUp` reset path when accessibility is enabled.
packages/react-native-gesture-handler/src/specs/NativeRNGestureHandlerModule.ts	Extends the TurboModule spec with `isAccessibilityEnabled(): boolean`.
packages/react-native-gesture-handler/src/components/Pressable/stateDefinitions.ts	Adds an Android accessibility-specific state config and selects it when accessibility is enabled.
packages/react-native-gesture-handler/src/RNGestureHandlerModule.web.ts	Adds a web stub for `isAccessibilityEnabled` (currently unimplemented).
packages/react-native-gesture-handler/android/src/main/java/com/swmansion/gesturehandler/react/RNGestureHandlerModule.kt	Implements `isAccessibilityEnabled()` on Android via `AccessibilityManager`.

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...e-handler/android/src/main/java/com/swmansion/gesturehandler/react/RNGestureHandlerModule.kt

Copilot · 2026-03-06T12:14:56Z

packages/react-native-gesture-handler/src/v3/components/Pressable.tsx

+      if (
+        Platform.OS === 'android' &&
+        !RNGestureHandlerModule.isAccessibilityEnabled()
+      ) {


This calls the native isAccessibilityEnabled() synchronously on every onTouchesUp. Since this value typically changes rarely, consider reading it once (e.g., on mount) and caching it in a ref/state to avoid repeated sync native calls on a hot interaction path.

packages/react-native-gesture-handler/src/components/Pressable/stateDefinitions.ts

packages/react-native-gesture-handler/src/RNGestureHandlerModule.web.ts

packages/react-native-gesture-handler/src/specs/NativeRNGestureHandlerModule.ts

Copilot

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 9 out of 9 changed files in this pull request and generated 4 comments.

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Copilot · 2026-03-09T16:49:32Z

packages/react-native-gesture-handler/src/components/Pressable/stateDefinitions.ts

  if (Platform.OS === 'android') {
+    if (isScreenReaderEnabled()) {
+      return getAndroidAccessibilityStatesConfig(handlePressIn, handlePressOut);
+    }
    return getAndroidStatesConfig(handlePressIn, handlePressOut);


getStatesConfig selects the Android state-machine configuration based on the screen reader status at the time this function is called. In both Pressable implementations, the state machine config is set once in a useEffect that does not re-run when the screen reader status changes, so toggling TalkBack while the app is running can leave Pressable using the wrong event-order config until remount. Consider wiring screen-reader status as reactive state (subscribe in the component and re-run setStates when it changes) or making getStatesConfig accept the current status as a parameter from the component.

Copilot · 2026-03-09T16:49:32Z

packages/react-native-gesture-handler/src/utils.ts

+export function isScreenReaderEnabled(): boolean {
+  if (isScreenReaderEnabledCache === null) {
+    isScreenReaderEnabledCache = RNGestureHandlerModule.isScreenReaderEnabled();
+  }
+  return isScreenReaderEnabledCache;


isScreenReaderEnabled() calls RNGestureHandlerModule.isScreenReaderEnabled() on first use, but the Jest mock used in jestSetup.js (src/mocks/module.tsx) doesn’t currently define this new method. Any tests (or consumer test code) that call into this utility (directly or via Pressable on Android) will throw TypeError: ... isScreenReaderEnabled is not a function. Add a default mock implementation (e.g. returning false) to the mocked module to keep the test environment consistent with the new public API.

packages/react-native-gesture-handler/src/utils.ts

Copilot · 2026-03-09T16:49:32Z

packages/react-native-gesture-handler/src/RNGestureHandlerModule.windows.ts

+  isScreenReaderEnabled() {
+    // NO-OP
+  },


isScreenReaderEnabled() is declared to return a boolean but this Windows stub currently returns undefined (no return statement). That can break callers like isScreenReaderEnabled() in src/utils.ts (cache becomes undefined) and may cause incorrect branching. Return an explicit boolean (likely false) to keep behavior predictable on Windows.

j-piasecki

Have you tried to approach this from the other side? i.e., why are the events in a different order when talkback is enabled? Maybe it's a problem with the native implementation (especially since the changes seems targeted to Android)

j-piasecki · 2026-03-13T07:22:22Z

packages/react-native-gesture-handler/src/utils.ts

+let isScreenReaderEnabledCache: boolean | null = null;
+
+AccessibilityInfo.addEventListener('screenReaderChanged', () => {
+  isScreenReaderEnabledCache = RNGestureHandlerModule.isScreenReaderEnabled();


Why do we need a new method in the module when there's one in React Native, and you can also just get the value from the event here?

j-piasecki · 2026-03-13T07:23:51Z

...e-handler/android/src/main/java/com/swmansion/gesturehandler/react/RNGestureHandlerModule.kt

+    val accessibilityManager = reactApplicationContext.getSystemService(
+      Context.ACCESSIBILITY_SERVICE,
+    ) as AccessibilityManager?
+
+    return accessibilityManager?.isTouchExplorationEnabled ?: false
+  }


Don't we already have this defined in some utils or extensions file?

poc

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Copilot AI review requested due to automatic review settings March 6, 2026 12:09

Copilot started reviewing on behalf of akwasniewski March 6, 2026 12:10 View session

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akwasniewski added 8 commits March 9, 2026 16:23

module function on ios

35814ae

remove leftover console log

bca566a

web and windows

ddc7874

only screen reader android

61bee1f

rename

feb7499

cache

03d6451

legacy

ef091ac

Merge branch 'main' into @akwasniewski/android-fix-talback

674cd20

akwasniewski requested a review from Copilot March 9, 2026 16:43

Copilot started reviewing on behalf of akwasniewski March 9, 2026 16:44 View session

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akwasniewski added 2 commits March 9, 2026 18:07

mock

f5fb841

update

11f7445

akwasniewski requested a review from m-bert March 9, 2026 17:12

akwasniewski marked this pull request as ready for review March 11, 2026 09:09

akwasniewski requested a review from j-piasecki March 11, 2026 09:09

j-piasecki reviewed Mar 13, 2026

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akwasniewski commented Mar 6, 2026 •

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