Element: contextmenu event

The contextmenu event fires when the user attempts to open a context menu. This event is typically triggered by clicking the right mouse button, or by pressing the context menu key.

In the latter case, the context menu is displayed at the bottom left of the focused element, unless the element is a tree, in which case the context menu is displayed at the bottom left of the current row.

Any right-click event that is not disabled (by calling the click event's preventDefault() method) will result in a contextmenu event being fired at the targeted element.

Note: An exception to this in Firefox: if the user holds down the Shift key while right-clicking, then the context menu will be shown without a contextmenu event being fired.

Syntax

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

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

oncontextmenu = (event) => {};

Event type

A PointerEvent. Inherits from MouseEvent.

Event UIEvent MouseEvent PointerEvent

Note: In earlier versions of the specification the event type for this event was a MouseEvent, and this is still the type passed in Firefox and Safari.

Event properties

This interface inherits properties from MouseEvent and Event.

PointerEvent.altitudeAngle Read only

Represents the angle between a transducer (a pointer or stylus) axis and the X-Y plane of a device screen.

PointerEvent.azimuthAngle Read only

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.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

Canceling the contextmenu event

In this example, the default action of the contextmenu event is canceled using preventDefault() when the contextmenu event is fired at the first paragraph. As a result, the first paragraph will do nothing when right-clicked, while the second paragraph will show the standard context menu offered by your browser.

Note: In Firefox, if you hold down the Shift key while right-clicking, then the context menu is shown without the contextmenu event being fired. Therefore, canceling the event does not stop the context menu from being shown.

HTML

html
<p id="noContextMenu">The context menu has been disabled on this paragraph.</p>
<p>But it has not been disabled on this one.</p>

JavaScript

js
const noContext = document.getElementById("noContextMenu");

noContext.addEventListener("contextmenu", (e) => {
  e.preventDefault();
});

Result

Specifications

Specification
UI Events
# event-type-contextmenu

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also