PointerEvent: pointerId property

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 pointerId read-only property of the PointerEvent interface is an identifier assigned to a given pointer event. The identifier is unique, being different from the identifiers of all other active pointer events. Since the value may be randomly generated, it is not guaranteed to convey any particular meaning.

Note: The pointerId property is implemented inconsistently across browsers and does not always persist for each ink stroke or interaction with the screen. For a reliable way of identifying multiple pointing devices on a screen simultaneously, see PointerEvent.persistentDeviceId.

Value

A number.

Examples

The following code snippet compares a previously saved pointerId with the one of the pointerdown event that was just fired.

js
let id; // Let's assume that this is a previously saved pointerId

target.addEventListener(
  "pointerdown",
  (event) => {
    // Compare previous event's ID that was cached
    // to current event's ID and handle accordingly
    if (id === event.pointerId) process_event(event);
  },
  false,
);

Specifications

Specification
Pointer Events
# dom-pointerevent-pointerid

Browser compatibility

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