Question

I recently came across a website that disabled text selection, preventing anyone from easily copying and pasting text. I have a bookmarklet that disables similar attempts to block context menus using JavaScript, and I’m wondering if it would be possible to do something similar for text selection.

function disableSelection(target){
if (typeof target.onselectstart!="undefined") //For IE
    target.onselectstart=function(){return false}
else if (typeof target.style.MozUserSelect!="undefined") //For Firefox
    target.style.MozUserSelect="none"
else //All other route (For Opera)
    target.onmousedown=function(){return false}
target.style.cursor = "default"
}

Elsewhere the function is called with disableSelection(document.body).

The solution from my context menu bookmarklet is also probably necessary:

javascript:void(document.onmousedown=null);
void(document.onclick=null);
void(document.oncontextmenu=null)

Finally, I had seen elsewhere on StackOverflow that CSS could also be used:

-webkit-user-select: none;
-khtml-user-select: none;
-moz-user-select: none;
-o-user-select: none;
user-select: none;

Is there a method to fight all of these at once and end this tyranny over my browser? How would I both enable MozUserSelect/SelectStart for all elements and set the CSS properties?

Answer 1

Check out the Enable All Text Selection bookmarklet by Alan Hogan. The only issue with the bookmarklet is that it does not handle frames/iframes (that’s a browser security thing so it’s unlikely something can be done about it).

As an added bonus, it also enables the mouse right-click event on pages that block it.

Create a bookmark (e.g. by dragging the icon to the left of the URL for any page to your bookmarks bar), right-click and select Edit, rename to something meaningful, and insert the following code in the URL field:

javascript:(function(){function%20allowTextSelection(){window.console&&console.log('allowTextSelection');var%20style=document.createElement('style');style.type='text/css';style.innerHTML='*,p,div{user-select:text%20!important;-moz-user-select:text%20!important;-webkit-user-select:text%20!important;}';document.head.appendChild(style);var%20elArray=document.body.getElementsByTagName('*');for(var%20i=0;i<elArray.length;i++){var%20el=elArray[i];el.onselectstart=el.ondragstart=el.ondrag=el.oncontextmenu=el.onmousedown=el.onmouseup=function(){return%20true};if(el%20instanceof%20HTMLInputElement&&['text','password','email','number','tel','url'].indexOf(el.type.toLowerCase())>-1){el.removeAttribute('disabled');el.onkeydown=el.onkeyup=function(){return%20true};}}}allowTextSelection();})();

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^{To make the bookmarklet code readable you can use the Bookmarkelt Builder at http://subsimple.com/bookmarklets/jsbuilder.htm – just paste the minified bookmarklet text and click the Format button.}