Hacker News Reader

Comment by pabs3 | Hacker News Reader

Just use the browser dev tools to re-enable text selection? There must be a browser extension that can automate that too. Maybe even Greasemonkey would do.

View on HN

In Firefox, you can simply set a preference and scripts won't be able to disable copy/paste.

Go to about:config, and search for dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled and disable it.

This will probably break many other use cases as well (e.g. services that allow pasting formatted text and will convert it to unformatted text, or pages like GitHub where you can paste an image into the edit area).

It shouldn't break either of those usecases (I gave GitHub a go and it certainly seems to work). Those functions tend to be handled by a different preference (dom.allow_cut_copy).

The only service I am aware of that it does break is Google Docs, because they handle things in an odd manner. But as they received several bug reports for that since 2017, I wouldn't get your hopes up that it'll ever be fixed.

That’s exactly what I do, however I wouldn’t want to try and explain how to do it to my Parents. They are meticulous with their filing system and this would make it impossible. They would ultimately probably print more stuff out to save.

1. Does Microsoft not disable printing, also?

2. If not, do your parents know how to print to PDF?

Printing from a webpage on desktop is a PITA. On Android you don't have the option to print. Brave new world.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com