Element: paste event

The paste event of the Clipboard API is fired when the user has initiated a "paste" action through the browser's user interface.

If the cursor is in an editable context (for example, in a <textarea> or an element with contenteditable attribute set to true) then the default action is to insert the contents of the clipboard into the document at the cursor position.

A handler for this event can access the clipboard contents by calling getData() on the event's clipboardData property.

To override the default behavior (for example to insert some different data or a transformation of the clipboard contents) an event handler must cancel the default action using event.preventDefault(), and then insert its desired data manually.

It's possible to construct and dispatch a synthetic paste event, but this will not affect the document's contents.

This event bubbles, is cancelable and is composed.

Syntax

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

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

onpaste = (event) => {};

Event type

A ClipboardEvent. Inherits from Event.

Event ClipboardEvent

Examples

Live example

HTML

html
<div class="source" contenteditable="true">Copy text from this box.</div>
<div class="target" contenteditable="true">And paste it into this one.</div>

JavaScript

js
const target = document.querySelector("div.target");

target.addEventListener("paste", (event) => {
  event.preventDefault();

  let paste = (event.clipboardData || window.clipboardData).getData("text");
  paste = paste.toUpperCase();
  const selection = window.getSelection();
  if (!selection.rangeCount) return;
  selection.deleteFromDocument();
  selection.getRangeAt(0).insertNode(document.createTextNode(paste));
  selection.collapseToEnd();
});

Result

Specifications

Specification
Clipboard API and events
# clipboard-event-paste
HTML Standard
# handler-onpaste

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also