Element: pointerdown event

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since ⁨July 2020⁩.

The pointerdown event is fired when a pointer becomes active. For mouse, it is fired when the device transitions from no buttons pressed to at least one button pressed. For touch, it is fired when physical contact is made with the digitizer. For pen, it is fired when the stylus makes physical contact with the digitizer.

This behavior is different from mousedown events. When using a physical mouse, mousedown events fire whenever any button on a mouse is pressed down. pointerdown events fire only upon the first button press; subsequent button presses don't fire pointerdown events.

Note: For touchscreen browsers that allow direct manipulation, a pointerdown event triggers implicit pointer capture, which causes the target to capture all subsequent pointer events as if they were occurring over the capturing target. Accordingly, pointerover, pointerenter, pointerleave, and pointerout will not fire as long as this capture is set. The capture can be released manually by calling element.releasePointerCapture on the target element, or it will be implicitly released after a pointerup or pointercancel event.

Syntax

Use the event name in methods like addEventListener(), or set an event handler property.

addEventListener("pointerdown", (event) => { })

onpointerdown = (event) => { }

Event type

A PointerEvent. Inherits from Event.

Event properties

This interface inherits properties from MouseEvent and Event.

PointerEvent.altitudeAngle Read only Experimental: Represents the angle between a transducer (a pointer or stylus) axis and the X-Y plane of a device screen.
PointerEvent.azimuthAngle Read only Experimental: Represents the angle between the Y-Z plane and the plane containing both the transducer (a pointer or stylus) axis and the Y axis.
PointerEvent.persistentDeviceId Read only Experimental: A unique identifier for the pointing device generating the PointerEvent.
PointerEvent.pointerId Read only: A unique identifier for the pointer causing the event.
PointerEvent.width Read only: The width (magnitude on the X axis), in CSS pixels, of the contact geometry of the pointer.
PointerEvent.height Read only: The height (magnitude on the Y axis), in CSS pixels, of the contact geometry of the pointer.
PointerEvent.pressure Read only: The normalized pressure of the pointer input in the range 0 to 1, where 0 and 1 represent the minimum and maximum pressure the hardware is capable of detecting, respectively.
PointerEvent.tangentialPressure Read only: The normalized tangential pressure of the pointer input (also known as barrel pressure or cylinder stress) in the range -1 to 1, where 0 is the neutral position of the control.
PointerEvent.tiltX Read only: The plane angle (in degrees, in the range of -90 to 90) between the Y–Z plane and the plane containing both the pointer (e.g., pen stylus) axis and the Y axis.
PointerEvent.tiltY Read only: The plane angle (in degrees, in the range of -90 to 90) between the X–Z plane and the plane containing both the pointer (e.g., pen stylus) axis and the X axis.
PointerEvent.twist Read only: The clockwise rotation of the pointer (e.g., pen stylus) around its major axis in degrees, with a value in the range 0 to 359.
PointerEvent.pointerType Read only: Indicates the device type that caused the event (mouse, pen, touch, etc.).
PointerEvent.isPrimary Read only: Indicates if the pointer represents the primary pointer of this pointer type.

Examples

Using addEventListener():

const para = document.querySelector("p");

para.addEventListener("pointerdown", (event) => {
  console.log("Pointer down event");
});

Using the onpointerdown event handler property:

const para = document.querySelector("p");

para.onpointerdown = (event) => {
  console.log("Pointer down event");
};

Specifications

Specification
Pointer Events # the-pointerdown-event
Pointer Events # dom-globaleventhandlers-onpointerdown

Browser compatibility

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This page was last modified on ⁨Sep 25, 2025⁩ by MDN contributors.

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