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TouchEvent.touches

A TouchList listing all the Touch objects for touch points that are currently in contact with the touch surface, regardless of whether or not they've changed or what their target element was at touchstart time.

This property is Read only .

Could be thought of how many separate fingers are able to be identified to be touching the screen.

Syntax

var touches = touchEvent.touches;

Return value

touches
A TouchList listing all the Touch objects for touch points that are still in contact with the touch surface, regardless of whether or not they've changed or what their target element was at touchstart time.

Example

This example illustrates the TouchEvent object's TouchEvent.touches property. The TouchEvent.touches property is a TouchList object and containing a list of Touch objects for every point of contact currently touching the surface.

In following code snippet, the touchstart event handler checks the length of the TouchEvent.touches list to determine the number of touch points that were activated and then invokes different handlers depending on the number of touch points.

someElement.addEventListener('touchstart', function(e) {
   // Invoke the appropriate handler depending on the 
   // number of touch points.
   switch (e.touches.length) {
     case 1: handle_one_touch(e); break;
     case 2: handle_two_touches(e); break;
     case 3: handle_three_touches(e); break;
     default: console.log("Not supported"); break;
   }   
 }, false);

Specifications

Specification Status Comment
Touch Events – Level 2 Draft Non-stable version.
Touch Events Recommendation Initial definition.

Browser compatibilityUpdate compatibility data on GitHub

Desktop
Chrome Edge Firefox Internet Explorer Opera Safari
Basic support 22 Yes 52
52
18 — 24
No Yes No
Mobile
Android webview Chrome for Android Edge Mobile Firefox for Android Opera for Android iOS Safari Samsung Internet
Basic support Yes Yes ? 6 Yes Yes ?

© 2005–2018 Mozilla Developer Network and individual contributors.
Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License v2.5 or later.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/TouchEvent/touches