Thecopy event of theClipboard 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 canmodify the clipboard contents by callingsetData(format, data) on the event'sClipboardEvent.clipboardData property, and cancelling the event's default action usingevent.preventDefault().

However, the handler cannotread the clipboard data.

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

This eventbubbles up the DOM tree, eventually toDocument andWindow, iscancelable and iscomposed.

Syntax

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

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

Event type

AClipboardEvent. Inherits fromEvent.

Examples

Live example

HTML

<div contenteditable="true">Copy text from this box.</div><div 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

Browser compatibility

See also

• cut event
• paste event