---
name: Double click
slug: double-click
category: interaction
status: published
created: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
modified: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
definition: Two clicks inside a short interval on the same spot, treated as one
  gesture that opens, edits, or selects a word rather than activating twice.
aliases:
  - name: dblclick
    source: mdn
  - name: double-click to open
  - name: double-click speed
tags:
  - pointer
relations:
  contrastWith:
    - secondary-click
    - double-tap
    - middle-click
  variantOf: []
  partOf: []
  seeAlso: []
implementations: []
sources:
  - title: "MDN: Pointer events"
    url: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Pointer_events
demo: inline
exhibit: false
useWhen: two clicks that mean something a single click does not
---

A double click is not two clicks. It is one gesture the system recognises when
two presses land close enough together in time and in space, and the threshold is
a setting the reader owns: every desktop operating system exposes a double-click
speed, and some people have it turned right down. That is why a double click can
never be the only way to reach a command. Anyone who cannot produce two presses
inside the interval, or who is using a touch screen where the gesture barely
exists, is simply locked out of it.

It survives where it means something a single click does not. In a file manager,
one click selects and two open, which is the distinction that gave the gesture its
career. In a spreadsheet or a table of editable cells, two clicks enter edit mode
on the value you already selected. In text, two clicks select a word and three
select the paragraph, which is browser behaviour you get for free and should not
break. What these have in common is that the single click already does something
useful, so nobody is stranded by not knowing about the second one.

On the web the event is `dblclick`, and it arrives after two full `click` events,
not instead of them. Your click handler runs first, so the two behaviours have to
compose: select, then open. If they conflict, you are fighting the platform, and
the usual fix is to move the destructive or navigating action to a button rather
than to try to swallow the first click with a timer. Suppressing that first click
for a few hundred milliseconds to see whether a second is coming makes every
single click feel broken.

Watch what a double click does to a form. Two presses on a submit button send two
requests unless the button disables itself on the first, which is one of the
oldest bugs on the web and is still worth checking.