Basically, on iOS, touch events are not emulated as mouse events . Use touch events instead: touchstart, touchmove, and touchhend.
In your case, on iOS and contrary to Android, "contextmenu" does not start when the screen is touched for a long time. To set up a long touch on iOS, you should use something like:
// Timer for long touch detection var timerLongTouch; // Long touch flag for preventing "normal touch event" trigger when long touch ends var longTouch = false; $(touchableElement) .on("touchstart", function(event){ // Prevent default behavior event.preventDefault(); // Test that the touch is correctly detected alert("touchstart event"); // Timer for long touch detection timerLongTouch = setTimeout(function() { // Flag for preventing "normal touch event" trigger when touch ends. longTouch = true; // Test long touch detection (remove previous alert to test it correctly) alert("long mousedown"); }, 1000); }) .on("touchmove", function(event){ // Prevent default behavior event.preventDefault(); // If timerLongTouch is still running, then this is not a long touch // (there is a move) so stop the timer clearTimeout(timerLongTouch); if(longTouch){ longTouch = false; // Do here stuff linked to longTouch move } else { // Do here stuff linked to "normal" touch move } }) .on("touchend", function(){ // Prevent default behavior event.preventDefault(); // If timerLongTouch is still running, then this is not a long touch // so stop the timer clearTimeout(timerLongTouch); if(longTouch){ longTouch = false; // Do here stuff linked to long touch end // (if different from stuff done on long touch detection) } else { // Do here stuff linked to "normal" touch move } });
Here is a page explaining (among other things) that touch events are not emulated as mouse events in each OS: http://www.html5rocks.com/en/mobile/touchandmouse/
Hope this helps, it took me a long time to figure this out;)