How to tell Siri Remote button presses and gamepad button presses apart?

Question

I wrote an override for pressesBegan(_ presses: Set<UIPress>, with event: UIPressesEvent?) on my ViewController.

  open override func pressesBegan(_ presses: Set<UIPress>, with event: UIPressesEvent?) {
    #if os(tvOS)
    for press in presses {
      switch press.type {
      case .menu: print("menu"); break;
      case .select: print("select"); break;
      case .playPause: print("playPause"); break;
      default: break;
      }
    }
    #endif
  }

It correctly sees a UIPress that has press.type set to .menu when I press the “menu” button on the Siri Remote.

However, it also gets a .menu press event when I press “circle” (buttonB) on a DualShock 4 gamepad that I've connected to my Apple TV. Is this normal? Is it documented behavior? (I assume the idea is to make apps “automatically” navigable with a gamepad.)

I don't always want “B on the gamepad” and “MENU on the remote” to do the same thing. How can I tell these two cases apart? Neither UIPressesEvent nor UIPress seem to carry any information in their fields as to which device originated the keypress. Is there some other way?

Nonah

Answer 1

I ended up changing my ViewController situation around so that I present a GCEventViewController whenever I don't want the B button to perform navigation. Then I use the tools offered by GameController to handle gamepad presses and pressesBegan seems to no longer be triggered by the B button.

Nonah