Element: copy event

The copy event 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.

Examples

Live example

HTML

<div class="source" contenteditable="true">Try copying text from this box...</div>
<div class="target" contenteditable="true">...and pasting it into this one</div>

JS

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

• Related events: cut, paste
• This event on Document targets: copy
• This event on Window targets: copy