How to Prevent Pasting into an Input

By  on  

Every once in a while I get to a website that doesn't allow me to paste into a form input. In most cases it's something to do with login credentials (username and or password) and auth codes. So how are they preventing me from pasting information? It's as easy as you'd think!

Let's start with the input element:

<input type="text" onpaste="return false;" ondrop="return false;" autocomplete="off" />

The onpaste attribute lets us prevent pasting into the form. Adding the autocomplete attribute as well as preventing drag and drop into the element. If you want to avoid the on{event} code in the HTML, you can do it the cleaner way:

myElement.addEventListener('paste', e => e.preventDefault());

Writing this post pains me because I loathe when websites prevent me from pasting text. I'm begging you not to do this. Just don't.

Recent Features

  • By
    Regular Expressions for the Rest of Us

    Sooner or later you'll run across a regular expression. With their cryptic syntax, confusing documentation and massive learning curve, most developers settle for copying and pasting them from StackOverflow and hoping they work. But what if you could decode regular expressions and harness their power? In...

  • By
    From Webcam to Animated GIF: the Secret Behind chat.meatspac.es!

    My team mate Edna Piranha is not only an awesome hacker; she's also a fantastic philosopher! Communication and online interactions is a subject that has kept her mind busy for a long time, and it has also resulted in a bunch of interesting experimental projects...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Add Styles to Console Statements

    I was recently checking out Google Plus because they implement some awesome effects.  I opened the console and same the following message: WARNING! Using this console may allow attackers to impersonate you and steal your information using an attack called Self-XSS. Do not enter or paste code that you...

  • By
    Web Audio API

    The Web Audio API allows developers to load and decode audio on demand using JavaScript.  The more I evaluate awesome games for Firefox OS TVs, the more I get to learn about these APIs that I normally wouldn't touch.  The following is a very basic introduction to the WebAudio API...

Discussion

  1. mwait

    So am I able to edit the locally stored js file to re-enable pasting until I reload the page?

  2. Thanks a lot for sharing this. It was really needed as I don’t like to write passwords and username again and again.

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!