Should You Disable Right-Click On Your Website? (& Why Do Some Sites Do It?)

Ever visited a website, right-clicked the page & saw a message saying something like “Right Click Is Disabled!“?

Have you found yourself wondering, why is right-click disabled on some websites?

And should you disable right-click on your own website?

If so, you’ve landed in exactly the right place. In this blog post, I’m going to explain why the right-click function is disabled on some websites & whether or not you should disable right-click on your own website.

First, we’ll start by answering this question…

Why Is Right-Click Disabled on Some Websites?

The reason some websites disable the right-click function is to attempt to protect their content.

The owners of these websites believe that by disabling the right-click function, people won’t be able to copy the text or images from their pages & use it/them elsewhere.

But, it’s an incorrect belief.

The reality is that disabling right-click on a website does not protect your content. Instead, it only does 1 thing which is frustrate the website’s users.

And I can say that confidently because I’ve been frustrated by this exact same thing myself.

You see, whenever I’m reading interesting content on the web, I like to open links from that page to any further reading material in a new tab, so that I can continue reading them & read the other pages afterwards.

And I think that’s a pretty natural thing to do. I’d confidently say lots of other people do the same.

But when I’m halfway through an article and right-click to open one of the links in a new tab so that I can read it when I’m done only to get a “Right Click Is Disabled!” message, it’s safe to say I get pretty darn annoyed.

After all, why should the owner of the website decide how I can & can’t use MY web browser?

And as I mentioned above, it’s a pointless annoyance because it really doesn’t protect the content at all.

In fact, getting around the right-click block is very simple & I’ll explain how below.

How To Bypass Right-Click Is Disabled

It’s super easy to bypass the right-click message on websites & there are several ways to do it.

The first method is to disable Javascript in your browser because without the Javascript being able to run, the website won’t be able to detect or block your clicks.

You can disable Javascript easily through your browser’s settings but there are also plenty of browser addons that you can install to easily disable Javascript on the fly with just 1 click on a button.

Of course, with Javascript disabled some of the other website’s functions may not operate correctly so it’s important to remember to re-enable it once you’re done.

Alternatively, if you feel you’re quite a tech-savvy user, you can add the text “view-source:” before the URL in the address bar & this will load up the source code of the page.

Then you can grab links, copy text or do whatever it is you were intending to do, without being blocked.

And given that either of these methods takes no longer than 30-60 seconds to do, you can likely see why disabling right-click is a pretty pointless exercise.

It just slows down the website, annoys the users & provides nothing but pitiful protection.

This brings me nicely to the next point.

Should You Disable Right-Click on Your Website?

Absolutely not. Disabling right-click on your website is a very bad move & will result in slower loading times, annoyed users & reduced engagement.

Not only that, but it’ll also make your site look unprofessional as heck.

So, in short, don’t do it.

The reality is that most people aren’t interested in stealing your content & if they are, they’re gonna find a way to do it one way or another.

Disabling right-click isn’t going to stop a content thief.

In fact, I’d argue that it’d probably just make them even more determined.

But as I say, alongside that, it’s also going to slow down your pages too – and quite dramatically as the Javascript function required to disable right-clicking (and CTRL+U pressing) is pretty darn resource intensive.

This means that even though it may not seem to slow down the load time of your website by much, it’ll drastically slow down page performance in the user’s browser – especially if they’re using a low-end PC.

And the longer the content, the more the page will lag… So even if engagement rates don’t drop off directly because of the disabled right-clicking, they’ll surely drop off due to the drastically reduced page performance.

Wrapping It Up

Disabling right-click on a website is a common mistake made by new or inexperienced website owners.

These website owners believe it’ll protect their content but in reality, it does nothing other than hinder their website’s chances of success.

It makes the pages of the website much slower, it annoys any users that try to right-click & it makes the website look extremely unprofessional (and Jurrasic).

If you are going to disable right-click on your website, you may as well go ahead & add some autoplaying music from the 90s, some flashing background images & change the cursor to a race car.

The best thing to do is to stop worrying about people copying your content & shift your focus onto producing more content to constantly stay one step ahead.

After all, if somebody is copying, they’re always gonna be one step behind.

But yeah, if you happened to find yourself wondering whether or not you should disable right-click, we really hope this article was of some help… And if you’d like to share your thoughts, feel free to leave a comment below.