IOS – forward all touches through a view

The UIGestureRecognizer is a red herring I think. In the end to solve this I overrode the pointInside:withEvent: method of my UIView:

- (BOOL)pointInside:(CGPoint)point withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
    BOOL pointInside = NO;

    if (CGRectContainsPoint(imageView.frame, point) || expanded) pointInside = YES;

    return pointInside;
}

This causes the view to trap all touches if you touch either the imageView or if its expanded flag is set. If it is not expanded then only trap the touches if they are on the imageView.

By returning NO, the top level VC's View queries the rest of its view hierarchy looking for a hit.

The following solution worked. I have multiple instances of MyCustomView; as the touches move I want to detect the views that are being touched

I ended up moving touch detection from MyCustomView to its superView, so the following code is no longer in MyCustomView class:

- (void)touchesMoved:(NSSet *)touches withEvent:(UIEvent *)event 
{
    UITouch *touch = [[event allTouches] anyObject];
    CGPoint touchLocation = [touch locationInView:self.contentView];

    for (UIView *view in self.contentView.subviews)
    {
        if ([view isKindOfClass:[MyCustomView class]] &&
            CGRectContainsPoint(view.frame, touchLocation))
        {

        }
    }
}