Element: auxclick event

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

addEventListener("auxclick", (event) => {});

onauxclick = (event) => {};

A MouseEvent. Inherits from Event.

This interface also inherits properties of its parents, UIEvent and Event.

MouseEvent.altKey Read only

Returns true if the alt key was down when the mouse event was fired.

MouseEvent.button Read only

The button number that was pressed (if applicable) when the mouse event was fired.

MouseEvent.buttons Read only

The buttons being pressed (if any) when the mouse event was fired.

MouseEvent.clientX Read only

The X coordinate of the mouse pointer in local (DOM content) coordinates.

MouseEvent.clientY Read only

The Y coordinate of the mouse pointer in local (DOM content) coordinates.

MouseEvent.ctrlKey Read only

Returns true if the control key was down when the mouse event was fired.

MouseEvent.layerX Non-standard Read only

Returns the horizontal coordinate of the event relative to the current layer.

MouseEvent.layerY Non-standard Read only

Returns the vertical coordinate of the event relative to the current layer.

MouseEvent.metaKey Read only

Returns true if the meta key was down when the mouse event was fired.

MouseEvent.movementX Read only

The X coordinate of the mouse pointer relative to the position of the last mousemove event.

MouseEvent.movementY Read only

The Y coordinate of the mouse pointer relative to the position of the last mousemove event.

MouseEvent.offsetX Read only

The X coordinate of the mouse pointer relative to the position of the padding edge of the target node.

MouseEvent.offsetY Read only

The Y coordinate of the mouse pointer relative to the position of the padding edge of the target node.

MouseEvent.pageX Read only

The X coordinate of the mouse pointer relative to the whole document.

MouseEvent.pageY Read only

The Y coordinate of the mouse pointer relative to the whole document.

MouseEvent.relatedTarget Read only

The secondary target for the event, if there is one.

MouseEvent.screenX Read only

The X coordinate of the mouse pointer in global (screen) coordinates.

MouseEvent.screenY Read only

The Y coordinate of the mouse pointer in global (screen) coordinates.

MouseEvent.shiftKey Read only

Returns true if the shift key was down when the mouse event was fired.

MouseEvent.mozInputSource Non-standard Read only

The type of device that generated the event (one of the MOZ_SOURCE_* constants). This lets you, for example, determine whether a mouse event was generated by an actual mouse or by a touch event (which might affect the degree of accuracy with which you interpret the coordinates associated with the event).

MouseEvent.webkitForce Non-standard Read only

The amount of pressure applied when clicking.

MouseEvent.x Read only

Alias for MouseEvent.clientX.

MouseEvent.y Read only

Alias for MouseEvent.clientY.

For the vast majority of browsers that map middle click to opening a link in a new tab, including Firefox, it is possible to cancel this behavior by calling preventDefault() from within an auxclick event handler.

When listening for auxclick events originating on elements that do not support input or navigation, you will often want to explicitly prevent other default actions mapped to the down action of the middle mouse button. On Windows this is usually autoscroll, and on macOS and Linux this is usually clipboard paste. This can be done by preventing the default behavior of the mousedown or pointerdown event.

Additionally, you may need to avoid opening a system context menu after a right click. Due to timing differences between operating systems, this too is not a preventable default behavior of auxclick. Instead, this can be done by preventing the default behavior of the contextmenu event.

In this example we define functions for two event handlers — onclick and onauxclick. The former changes the color of the button background, while the latter changes the button foreground (text) color. You also can see the two functions in action by trying the demo out with a multi-button mouse (see it live on GitHub; also see the source code).

let button = document.querySelector("button");
let html = document.querySelector("html");

function random(number) {
  return Math.floor(Math.random() * number);
}

function randomColor() {
  return `rgb(${random(255)}, ${random(255)}, ${random(255)})`;
}

button.onclick = () => {
  button.style.backgroundColor = randomColor();
};

button.onauxclick = (e) => {
  e.preventDefault();
  button.style.color = randomColor();
};

button.oncontextmenu = (e) => {
  e.preventDefault();
};

Notice that in addition to capturing the auxclick event using onauxclick, the contextmenu event is also captured, and preventDefault() called on that event, in order to prevent the context menu from popping up after the color change is applied.

• Introduction to events
• click
• contextmenu
• dblclick
• mousedown
• mouseup
• pointerdown
• pointerup