HTMLElement: copy event

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since March 2017.

The copy event fires when the user initiates a copy action through the browser's user interface.

Syntax

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

js
addEventListener("copy", (event) => {});

oncopy = (event) => {};

Event type

A ClipboardEvent. Inherits from Event.

Event ClipboardEvent

Event properties

Also inherits properties from its parent Event.

ClipboardEvent.clipboardData Read only

A DataTransfer object containing the data affected by the user-initiated cut, copy, or paste operation, along with its MIME type.

Example

This example blocks every copy and paste attempt from the <textarea>.

HTML

html
<h3>Play with this text area:</h3>
<textarea id="editor" rows="3">
Try copying and pasting text into this field!
</textarea>

<h3>Log:</h3>
<p id="log"></p>

JavaScript

js
const log = document.getElementById("log");

function logCopy(event) {
  log.innerText = `Copy blocked!\n${log.innerText}`;
  event.preventDefault();
}

function logPaste(event) {
  log.innerText = `Paste blocked!\n${log.innerText}`;
  event.preventDefault();
}

const editor = document.getElementById("editor");

editor.oncopy = logCopy;
editor.onpaste = logPaste;

Result

Specifications

Specification
Clipboard API and events
# clipboard-event-copy
HTML Standard
# handler-oncopy

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also