Element: 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 July 2015.

See full compatibility

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

The event's default action is to copy the selection (if any) to the clipboard.

A handler for this event can modify the clipboard contents by calling setData(format, data) on the event's ClipboardEvent.clipboardData property, and cancelling the event's default action using event.preventDefault().

However, the handler cannot read the clipboard data.

It's possible to construct and dispatch a synthetic copy event, but this will not affect the system clipboard.

This event bubbles up the DOM tree, eventually to Document and Window, is cancelable and is composed.

Syntax

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

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

oncopy = (event) => { }

Event type

A ClipboardEvent. Inherits from Event.

Examples

Live example

HTML

html

<div class="source" contenteditable="true">Copy text from this box.</div>
<div class="target" contenteditable="true">And paste it into this one.</div>

div.source,
div.target {
  border: 1px solid gray;
  margin: 0.5rem;
  padding: 0.5rem;
  height: 1rem;
  background-color: #e9eef1;
}

JavaScript

const source = document.querySelector("div.source");

source.addEventListener("copy", (event) => {
  const selection = document.getSelection();
  event.clipboardData.setData("text/plain", selection.toString().toUpperCase());
  event.preventDefault();
});

Result

Specifications

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

Browser compatibility

	desktop					mobile
	Chrome	Edge	Firefox	Opera	Safari	Chrome Android	Firefox for Android	Opera Android	Safari on iOS	Samsung Internet	WebView Android	WebView on iOS
`copy` event	Chrome – Full support Chrome 1 (Release date: 2008-12-11) footnote Full support	Edge – Full support Edge 12 (Release date: 2015-07-29) footnote Full support	Firefox – Full support Firefox 22 (Release date: 2013-06-25) footnote Full support	Opera – Full support Opera 12.1 (Release date: 2012-11-20) footnote Full support	Safari – Full support Safari 3 (Release date: 2007-10-26) footnote Full support	Chrome Android – Full support Chrome Android 18 (Release date: 2012-06-27) footnote Full support	Firefox for Android – Full support Firefox for Android 22 (Release date: 2013-06-25) footnote Full support	Opera Android – Full support Opera Android 12.1 (Release date: 2012-10-09) footnote Full support	Safari on iOS – Full support Safari on iOS 3 (Release date: 2009-06-17) footnote Full support	Samsung Internet – Full support Samsung Internet 1 (Release date: 2013-04-27) footnote Full support	WebView Android – Full support WebView Android 4.4 (Release date: 2013-12-09) footnote Full support	WebView on iOS – Full support WebView on iOS 3 (Release date: 2009-06-17) footnote Full support

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Full support: Full support