CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptstylus-pen
KspR
KspR

Reputation: 51

Is it possible to detect a passive stylus in a web browser

I was wondering if you can detect that an event comes from a passive pen from modern web browsers.

For example on a surface hub, in Edge, you have event.pointerType === 'pen' to distinguish touches made with pen vs those made with a finger but I don't know if you can do the same with any pen on any browser in any OS.

I haven't found any information about it but I am not sure I looked at the right places.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1874

Answers (2)

Ali Haghighi
Ali Haghighi

Reputation: 143

yes and no! passive pen is interpreted as touch BUT you can use pointerevent width and height to guess a touch is passive pen or simple touch. assuming finger has bigger width and height than pen

Upvotes: 0

ryanpcmcquen
ryanpcmcquen

Reputation: 6465

event.pointerType is supported by most modern browsers:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/PointerEvent/pointerType

In Firefox it requires that dom.w3c_pointer_events.enabled be set to true in about:config. It presents mouse, pen, and touch as values.

Upvotes: 2

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