HTMLInputElement: select() method

Baseline
Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

The select() method of the HTMLInputElement interface selects all the text in an <input> element that includes a text field.

Calling element.select() will not necessarily focus the input, so it is often used with HTMLElement.focus().

Syntax

js
select()

Parameters

None.

Return value

None (undefined).

Examples

Click the button in this example to select all the text in the <input> element.

HTML

html
<input type="text" id="text-box" size="20" value="Hello world!" />
<button>Select text</button>

JavaScript

js
function selectText() {
  const input = document.getElementById("text-box");
  input.focus();
  input.select();
}

document.querySelector("button").addEventListener("click", selectText);

Result

Specifications

Specification
HTML
# dom-textarea/input-select

Browser compatibility

See also