touchstart

The touchstart event is fired when a touch point is placed on the touch surface.

General info

Specification
Touch Events
Interface
TouchEvent
Bubbles
Yes
Cancelable
Yes
Target
Document, Element
Default Action
undefined

Properties

Property Type Description
target Read only EventTarget The event target (the topmost target in the DOM tree).
type Read only DOMString The type of event.
bubbles Read only Boolean Whether the event normally bubbles or not
cancelable Read only Boolean Whether the event is cancellable or not?
view Read only WindowProxy document.defaultView (window of the document)
detail Read only long (float) 0.
touches Read only TouchList A list of Touches for every point of contact currently touching the surface.
targetTouches Read only TouchList A list of Touches for every point of contact that is touching the surface and started on the element that is the target of the current event.
changedTouches Read only TouchList A list of Touches for every point of contact which contributed to the event.
For the touchstart event this must be a list of the touch points that just became active with the current event. For the touchmove event this must be a list of the touch points that have moved since the last event. For the touchend and touchcancel events this must be a list of the touch points that have just been removed from the surface.
ctrlKey Read only boolean true if the control key was down when the event was fired. false otherwise.
shiftKey Read only boolean true if the shift key was down when the event was fired. false otherwise.
altKey Read only boolean true if the alt key was down when the event was fired. false otherwise.
metaKey Read only boolean true if the meta key was down when the event was fired. false otherwise.

Examples

Code samples for those events are available on the dedicated page: Touch events.

Browser compatibility

Feature Chrome Edge Firefox (Gecko) Internet Explorer Opera Safari (WebKit)
Basic support 22.0 (Yes) 18.0 (18.0)[1]
52.0 (52.0)[2]
No support No support No support
Feature Android Android Webview Chrome for Android Edge Firefox Mobile (Gecko) Firefox OS IE Mobile Opera Mobile Safari Mobile
Basic support (Yes) (Yes) (Yes) (Yes) 6.0 (6.0) (Yes) 11 (Yes) (Yes)

[1] Touch events were implemented in Gecko 18.0, but removed again in 24.0 (Firefox 24.0 / Thunderbird 24.0 / SeaMonkey 2.21) on the desktop version of Firefox due to web compatibility issues (bug 888304).

[2] As of Gecko 52.0, touch events support has been fixed and reenabled in Windows desktop platforms.

Document Tags and Contributors

 Last updated by: erikadoyle,