Element: copy event

The copy event fires when the user initiates a copy action through the browser's user interface.

Bubbles	Yes
Cancelable	Yes
Interface	`ClipboardEvent`
Event handler property	`oncopy`

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>

div.source, div.target {
    border: 1px solid gray;
    margin: .5rem;
    padding: .5rem;
    height: 1rem;
    background-color: #e9eef1;
}

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

Specification
Clipboard API and events # clipboard-event-copy

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser