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. One exception to this is that 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

Event properties

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.

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 that in Firefox, if you hold down the Shift key while right-clicking, then the context menu is shown without the contextmenu event being fired, so 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