Element: contextmenu event
Limited availability
This feature is not Baseline because it does not work in some of the most widely-used browsers.
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.
addEventListener("contextmenu", (event) => { })
oncontextmenu = (event) => { }
Event type
A PointerEvent. Inherits from MouseEvent.
Note:
In earlier versions of the specification, the event type for this event was a MouseEvent. Check browser compatibility for more information.
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
<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
const noContext = document.getElementById("noContextMenu");
noContext.addEventListener("contextmenu", (e) => {
e.preventDefault();
});
Result
Specifications
| Specification |
|---|
| Pointer Events # contextmenu |