Detecting the direction of PAN gesture in iOS

In the target selector of your gesture recognizer, use - (CGPoint)velocityInView:(UIView *)view;:

- (void)panRecognized:(UIPanGestureRecognizer *)rec
{
    CGPoint vel = [rec velocityInView:self.view];
    if (vel.x > 0)
    {
        // user dragged towards the right
        counter++;
    }
    else
    {
        // user dragged towards the left
        counter--;
    }
}

P.s.: I didn't know about this method until approx. 3 minutes before. One of Google's first hits was the official Apple documentation.

Something like this:

- (void)pan:(UIPanGestureRecognizer *)sender
{

    typedef NS_ENUM(NSUInteger, UIPanGestureRecognizerDirection) {
        UIPanGestureRecognizerDirectionUndefined,
        UIPanGestureRecognizerDirectionUp,
        UIPanGestureRecognizerDirectionDown,
        UIPanGestureRecognizerDirectionLeft,
        UIPanGestureRecognizerDirectionRight
    };

    static UIPanGestureRecognizerDirection direction = UIPanGestureRecognizerDirectionUndefined;

    switch (sender.state) {

        case UIGestureRecognizerStateBegan: {

            if (direction == UIPanGestureRecognizerDirectionUndefined) {

                CGPoint velocity = [sender velocityInView:recognizer.view];

                BOOL isVerticalGesture = fabs(velocity.y) > fabs(velocity.x);

                if (isVerticalGesture) {
                    if (velocity.y > 0) {
                        direction = UIPanGestureRecognizerDirectionDown;
                    } else {
                        direction = UIPanGestureRecognizerDirectionUp;
                    }
                }

                else {
                    if (velocity.x > 0) {
                        direction = UIPanGestureRecognizerDirectionRight;
                    } else {
                        direction = UIPanGestureRecognizerDirectionLeft;
                    }
                }
            }

            break;
        }

        case UIGestureRecognizerStateChanged: {
            switch (direction) {
                case UIPanGestureRecognizerDirectionUp: {
                    [self handleUpwardsGesture:sender];
                    break;
                }
                case UIPanGestureRecognizerDirectionDown: {
                    [self handleDownwardsGesture:sender];
                    break;
                }
                case UIPanGestureRecognizerDirectionLeft: {
                    [self handleLeftGesture:sender];
                    break;
                }
                case UIPanGestureRecognizerDirectionRight: {
                    [self handleRightGesture:sender];
                    break;
                }
                default: {
                    break;
                }
            }
        }

        case UIGestureRecognizerStateEnded: {
            direction = UIPanGestureRecognizerDirectionUndefined;   
            break;
        }

        default:
            break;
    }

}

- (void)handleUpwardsGesture:(UIPanGestureRecognizer *)sender
{
    NSLog(@"Up");
}

- (void)handleDownwardsGesture:(UIPanGestureRecognizer *)sender
{
    NSLog(@"Down");
}

- (void)handleLeftGesture:(UIPanGestureRecognizer *)sender
{
    NSLog(@"Left");
}

- (void)handleRightGesture:(UIPanGestureRecognizer *)sender
{
    NSLog(@"Right");
}