Navigator: clipboard property

Secure context: This feature is available only in secure contexts (HTTPS), in some or all supporting browsers.

The clipboard read-only property of the Navigator interface returns a Clipboard object used to read and write the clipboard's contents.

This is the entry point to the Clipboard API, which can be used to implement cut, copy, and paste features within a web application.

Value

The Clipboard object used to access the system clipboard.

Examples

The following code uses navigator.clipboard to access the system clipboard in order to read text contents from the clipboard.

js
navigator.clipboard
  .readText()
  .then(
    (clipText) => (document.querySelector(".cliptext").innerText = clipText),
  );

This snippet replaces the contents of the element whose class is "cliptext" with the text contents of the clipboard. Perhaps this code is being used in a browser extension that displays the current clipboard contents, automatically updating periodically or when specific events fire.

If the clipboard is empty or doesn't contain text, the "cliptext" element's contents are cleared. This happens because readText() returns an empty string if the clipboard is empty or doesn't contain text.

Specifications

Specification
Clipboard API and events
# navigator-clipboard

Browser compatibility

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