jQuery iOS Shake Detector

Note: this library isn’t under active development. You may want to check out this fork from Linus Unnebäck instead.

A jQuery plugin that detects a ‘shake’ event using Safari’s accelerometer support in iOS 4.2+.

jquery.ios-shake is a simple-to-use jQuery plugin that monitors the iPhone/iPad’s accelerometer in order to detect the user “shaking” the device. The goal of this script is to provide robust shake detection and minimize the chances of triggering spurious shake events.

Click here for a demo.

This is the minimum code required to detect a shake:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.ios-shake.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
    $(document).ready(function() {
        $.shake({
            callback: function() {
                yourFunction();
            }
        });
    });
</script>

And, if you want to customize a bit more, here’s an example with all the options. You can raise violence to decrease sensitivity or decrease the debounce if you need to detect shakes faster than one per second. (I’d leave the other options out unless you have some really specific application that’s not working with the default settings.) The debug and supported options allow you to pass div IDs to ios-shake so that it can place some specific content on your page. See example.html for details.

$.shake({
    debug: "#debugdiv",             // debug div id
    supported: "#notsupporteddiv",  // not supported message div
    violence: 3.0,                  // single shake sensitivity
    hf: 0.2,                        // high-pass filter constant
    shakethreshold: 5,              // number of single shakes required to fire a shake event
    debounce: 1000,                 // delay between shake events (in ms)
    callback: function() {
        yourFunction();
    }
});