Element: click event

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

An element receives a click event when any of the following occurs:

  • A pointing-device button (such as a mouse's primary button) is both pressed and released while the pointer is located inside the element.
  • A touch gesture is performed on the element.
  • Any user interaction that is equivalent to a click occurs, such as pressing the Space key or Enter key while the element is focused.

Note: In practice, browsers don't fire the click event for custom controls such as a <div> with tabindex="0". To check the reason behind this behavior, see this Chromium issue.

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.

The event is a device-independent event — meaning it can be activated by touch, keyboard, mouse, and any other mechanism provided by assistive technology.

Syntax

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

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

onclick = (event) => {};

Event type

A PointerEvent. Inherits from MouseEvent.

Event UIEvent MouseEvent PointerEvent

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 inherits properties from MouseEvent and Event.

PointerEvent.altitudeAngle Read only

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

PointerEvent.azimuthAngle Read only

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.

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

js
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

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also