Objective-c – uibutton with touchesBegan

The tap events are handled not by the touches method callbacks in UIView, but as targets-actions in UIControl. UIControl is a subclass of UIView, and adds abstractions for taps, drags and other common user actions, so that you do not need to implement the logic yourself.

To add a action for the user tapping a control simply do this:

[myControl addTarget:self
              action:@selector(didSelectFoo:) 
           forEvents:UIControlEventTouchUpInside];

This is usable both if you subclass UIControl yourself, or if you use any of the provided controls such as UIButton, UITextField, UILabel, etc.

I may be not 100% accurate here, but if you place -touchesBegan:withEvent: in your view controller (or its main view) then you will get only those touches that have not been handled by some subviews in the view hierarchy. To intercept all touches you should use UIView subclass for your controller view and override hitTest:withEvent: method in it:

- (UIView *)hitTest:(CGPoint)point withEvent:(UIEvent *)event {
    touchedView = [super hitTest:point withEvent:event];
    NSSet* touches = [event allTouches];
    // handle touches if you need
    return touchedView;
}

For more information see Event delivery section in "Event handling guide" for iOS