Free tools / Dead click checker
Dead click checker
Paste a URL. A real browser loads the page, clicks every button and link it can find, and reports which ones produced no response at all — no page navigation, no visible change, nothing.
Checked
0Dead
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Why click it instead of just reading the code
A code review can tell you a button has an onClick
attached. It can't tell you the handler throws before it does
anything, that the element behind it is actually intercepting the
click, or that a dependency didn't load. The only way to know a
control actually works is to click it in a real browser and watch
what happens — which is what this does, automatically, for every
clickable element on the page.
What counts as dead
No DOM mutation anywhere on the page within a second of the click, and no navigation to a different URL. That's deliberately the same window UserTapes' own session-replay product uses to flag dead clicks on real user sessions — see what is a rage click, and how are they actually detected for the fuller heuristic and its honest limits, most of which apply here too: a purely visual change with no DOM change can still read as dead, and a slow response that resolves a second later reads as dead when it's really just slow.
What this doesn't tell you
This is a one-time crawl of one page, not a record of what real visitors experience. It won't tell you whether anyone's actually hit the broken control, how often, or what they did next — a dead click that nobody has reached yet is a bug worth fixing, but a dead click on your highest-traffic button is a different kind of urgent. For that distinction, you need real sessions, not a crawl — see session replay for developers.
FAQ
How does this dead click checker work?
It loads the page you paste in inside a real headless browser, finds every element that looks clickable — buttons, links, anything with role="button" or an onclick handler — and clicks each one in turn. If a click produces no DOM change and no navigation within a second, it's reported as dead. This is the same heuristic UserTapes' own session-replay product uses to flag dead clicks on real user sessions.
What counts as "no response"?
No DOM mutation anywhere on the page within one second of the click, and no navigation to a different URL. A purely visual change with no DOM change — a CSS-only hover state, a canvas redraw — can still read as dead, since there's no way to observe it from outside the page. It's a signal, not a verdict; see the linked article on rage clicks for the same caveat applied to real session data.
Why does a scan take longer than your other tools?
Most clicks don't need it, but if one actually navigates to a different page, the checker has to reload the original URL before it can test the next candidate. Up to 15 elements are checked per scan, which keeps most scans under a minute.
Does this replace watching real user sessions?
No — it tells you a control is broken, not that anyone hit it, how often, or what they did next. It's a pre-launch or spot-check tool. For what's actually happening to real visitors, see session replay.