The core change here is to set gestureResponseDistance and swipeEdgeWidth to a large value so they trigger anywhere on the screen.
After this change SwipeableMessage wasn't triggering anymore. In D304 I made it wait for the swipe-to-go-back gesture, but now that the swipe-to-go-back gesture is everywhere, the swipe-to-reply gesture didn't activate at all.
I removed the waitFor from D304 and it felt like things were okay. Perhaps something has changed in React Navigation since D304, but if not I think the fact that you swipe anywhere to go back now will make these gestures less likely to conflict.
After this diff, if we notice ourselves accidentally triggering swipe-to-reply when meaning to trigger swipe-to-go-back, we can revisit this decision.