How to do swipe gesture on RecyclerView item without 3rd party lib

Yes there is, you can do it with ItemTouchHelper class provided by the support library.

P.S. I had to do this the other day and also wanted to avoid using 3rd party lib if possible. The library might be doing much more than you need and because of that it might be more complex than necessary in your case. It can also unnecessary grow your method count. This is just a sample of reasons why you should avoid adding lib as a quick fix for your problem.

EDIT: I had a go at this, see this blog post and this github repo.

Yes there is. Use ItemTouchHelper. Try to clone this project and see how it is used.

For specific file, see line 87

For lazy people who don't want to click links, this is how you setup:

    ItemTouchHelper.SimpleCallback simpleCallback =
            new ItemTouchHelper.SimpleCallback(0, ItemTouchHelper.RIGHT) {
                @Override
                public boolean onMove(RecyclerView recyclerView, RecyclerView.ViewHolder viewHolder,
                                      RecyclerView.ViewHolder target) {
                    return false;
                }

                @Override
                public void onSwiped(RecyclerView.ViewHolder viewHolder, int direction) {
                    //do things
                }
            };

    ItemTouchHelper itemTouchHelper = new ItemTouchHelper(simpleCallback);
    itemTouchHelper.attachToRecyclerView(recyclerView);

The recyclerView is the variable holding recycler view.

There are other directions aside from ItemTouchHelper.RIGHT, try to experiment.