Show HN: Enable right click and copy on websites that disabled it

60 pointsposted 14 hours ago
by chernikovalexey

28 Comments

smitelli

14 hours ago

[PSA] Firefox has this built in already: Hold Shift while right-clicking. Been a while since I tested on a fresh profile, but I don’t believe this requires any preference tweaking or about:config stuff.

danillonunes

11 hours ago

There's a about:config setting called dom.event.contextmenu.enabled defaulting to true, when you change to false you don't need to hold shift, it will always open the browser context menu (and in most cases still do the page behavior of showing the web app context menu or whatever, you can then press esc to close the browser's menu but it may also close the page menu depending on how they implemented it).

Then there's a second option called dom.event.contextmenu.shift_suppresses_event which defaults to true and does what you said: Simple right click opens the page menu and shift + right click don't send the page the event at all and instead opens the browser's menu.

fsckboy

13 hours ago

that's a great thing to know! thanks.

I wish there was a setting for "right click works, hold shift key for wanky behavior"

musicale

5 hours ago

I'd like to see this feature in all browsers.

rendaw

6 hours ago

Is there something similar for ctrl+f?

squigz

13 hours ago

This is still default behavior

gcanyon

10 hours ago

I assume there's something similar for Safari on Mac, but I don't know.

When I run into a site that doesn't want to let me select/copy text, I screen shot the page -- in Photos on iOS, and in Preview on MacOS, selecting text out of an image generally works great. Just tap and hold a moment on iOS, or hover a moment on MacOS, and then drag/click-drag to select.

willi59549879

12 hours ago

There are also blogs that don't allow zooming. Technical blogs with visualisations are almost not readable on mobile

IshKebab

9 hours ago

You can force zooming to be allowed in the accessibility settings, at least on Chrome mobile.

thih9

10 hours ago

Workaround: take a screenshot, zoom in.

wildzzz

14 hours ago

I remember disabling right click on a geocities site I built for my friends to show off their hand-drawn comics. Another guy in our 4th grade class was rehosting our comics on his geocities so I disabled right click.

creer

12 hours ago

How did that work out?

musicale

5 hours ago

Web pages are intended to be editable. I wish popular browsers had an easy user-facing way to invoke

    document.designMode = 'on'

stevenicr

11 hours ago

IF this can change the settings for tap/right click -> save video files, people may actually use better file formats than gifs one day.

dimitri-vs

13 hours ago

Wonder if this works on copy/download protected Google Docs. They had some pretty interesting protections, but could still be circumvented by looking at page source.

jboogie77

6 hours ago

Wondering the same thing for Google sheets

umbra07

4 hours ago

does anyone know of a solution for websites that hijack your ctrl-LMB (which is supposed to open the link you just clicked in a new tab)?

BigBalli

13 hours ago

The vast majority of websites that disable it, they're actually doing it to provide additional functionality which would be lost otherwise. Seems like using a sledgehammer to snap a button.

eek2121

12 hours ago

I have no clue what websites you are visiting, but the ones I have used typically either do it to disable/customize copy/paste or use it to track your actions. They often make too many assumptions about the browser in general.

Lerc

12 hours ago

Left button draw, Right button erase

Left button rotate, Right button pan

Left button gun, Right button grenade.

lightedman

11 hours ago

How about we just stop allowing this and call it what it is - disabling functionality of my system without my explicit permission - and start charging these site operators with CFAA violations.

SoftTalker

11 hours ago

Or perhaps ADA violations. Breaking browser behavior could be argued as an unreasonable obstruction for disabled users.

garciansmith

14 hours ago

How is this different than other extensions that enable right clicking? There are certainly a few for Firefox (I use "Allow Right-Click").

akhileshwar09

14 hours ago

yea i knew this and i think we can also do the same thing in MAC os .