Element: auxclick event

The auxclick event is fired at an Element when a non-primary pointing device button (any mouse button other than the primary—usually leftmost—button) has been pressed and released both within the same element.

auxclick is fired after the mousedown and mouseup events have been fired, in that order.

Syntax

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

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

onauxclick = (event) => { }

Event type

A PointerEvent. Inherits from MouseEvent.

Event properties

This interface inherits properties from MouseEvent and Event.

PointerEvent.altitudeAngle Read only Experimental

Represents the angle between a transducer (a pointer or stylus) axis and the X-Y plane of a device screen.

PointerEvent.azimuthAngle Read only Experimental

Represents the angle between the Y-Z plane and the plane containing both the transducer (a pointer or stylus) axis and the Y axis.

PointerEvent.pointerId Read only

A unique identifier for the pointer causing the event.

PointerEvent.width Read only

The width (magnitude on the X axis), in CSS pixels, of the contact geometry of the pointer.

PointerEvent.height Read only

The height (magnitude on the Y axis), in CSS pixels, of the contact geometry of the pointer.

PointerEvent.pressure Read only

The normalized pressure of the pointer input in the range 0 to 1, where 0 and 1 represent the minimum and maximum pressure the hardware is capable of detecting, respectively.

PointerEvent.tangentialPressure Read only

The normalized tangential pressure of the pointer input (also known as barrel pressure or cylinder stress) in the range -1 to 1, where 0 is the neutral position of the control.

PointerEvent.tiltX Read only

The plane angle (in degrees, in the range of -90 to 90) between the Y–Z plane and the plane containing both the pointer (e.g., pen stylus) axis and the Y axis.

PointerEvent.tiltY Read only

The plane angle (in degrees, in the range of -90 to 90) between the X–Z plane and the plane containing both the pointer (e.g., pen stylus) axis and the X axis.

PointerEvent.twist Read only

The clockwise rotation of the pointer (e.g., pen stylus) around its major axis in degrees, with a value in the range 0 to 359.

PointerEvent.pointerType Read only

Indicates the device type that caused the event (mouse, pen, touch, etc.).

PointerEvent.isPrimary Read only

Indicates if the pointer represents the primary pointer of this pointer type.

Preventing default actions

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.

Examples

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).

JavaScript

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.

HTML

<button><h1>Click me!</h1></button>

Specifications

Browser compatibility

See also

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