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Element: click event

An element receives a click event when a pointing device button (such as a mouse's primary mouse button) is both pressed and released while the pointer is located inside the element.

If the button is pressed on one element and the pointer is moved outside the element before the button is released, the event is fired on the most specific ancestor element that contained both elements.

click fires after both the mousedown and mouseup events have fired, in that order.

Syntax

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

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

onclick = (event) => {};

Event type

A PointerEvent. Inherits from MouseEvent.

Note: In earlier versions of the specification the event type for this event was a MouseEvent, and this is still the type passed in Firefox and Safari.

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.
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.

Usage notes

The PointerEvent object passed into the event handler for click has its detail property set to the number of times the target was clicked. In other words, detail will be 2 for a double-click, 3 for triple-click, and so forth. This counter resets after a short interval without any clicks occurring; the specifics of how long that interval is may vary from browser to browser and across platforms. The interval is also likely to be affected by user preferences; for example, accessibility options may extend this interval to make it easier to perform multiple clicks with adaptive interfaces.

Examples

This example displays the number of consecutive clicks on a <button>.

HTML

html

<button>Click</button>

JavaScript

const button = document.querySelector("button");

button.addEventListener("click", (event) => {
  button.textContent = `Click count: ${event.detail}`;
});

Result

Try making rapid, repeated clicks on the button to increase the click count. If you take a break between clicks, the count will reset.

Specifications

Specification
UI Events # event-type-click
HTML Standard # handler-onclick

Browser compatibility

	Desktop						Mobile
	Chrome	Edge	Firefox	Internet Explorer	Opera	Safari	WebView Android	Chrome Android	Firefox for Android	Opera Android	Safari on IOS	Samsung Internet
`click_event`	1	12	6 Beginning in Firefox 68, Firefox no longer incorrectly sends a `click` event for buttons other than the primary mouse button; previously, there were circumstances in which this would occur. One example: middle-clicking a link would send a `click` to the document's `<html>` element.	9	11.6	3	4.4	18	6	12.1	1	1.0
`type_pointerevent`	92	92	No	No	78	No	92	92	No	65	No	16.0