Is it possible to center text in select box

Question

I tried this  http   jsfiddle net ilyaD KGcC3   HTML    lt select name  state  class  ddList  gt       lt option value    gt  please select a state  lt  option gt       lt option class  lt  value  --  gt none lt  option gt       lt option class  lt  value  AL  gt Alabama lt  option gt       lt option class  lt  value  AK  gt Alaska lt  option gt       lt option class  lt  value  AZ  gt Arizona lt  option gt       lt option class  lt  value  AR  gt Arkansas lt  option gt       lt option class  lt  value  CA  gt California lt  option gt       lt option class  lt  value  CO  gt Colorado lt  option gt   lt  select gt    CSS   select   width  400px  text-align  center    select  lt   text-align  center      As you can see  it doesn t work   Is there a CSS-only way to center text in the select-box

User · Answer

just using this    select    text-align-last  center  padding-right  29px

User · Answer

Not quite Centering but using example above you can make a left margin in select box    lt style gt  UName   text-indent  5px    lt  style gt  lt br gt    lt select  name  UserName  id  UserName  size  1  gt       lt option class  UName  selected value  select  gt Select User lt  option gt       lt option class  UName  value  User1  gt User 1 Name lt  option gt       lt option class  UName  value  User2  gt User 2 Name  lt  option gt       lt option class  UName  value  User3  gt User 3 Name lt  option gt   lt  select gt

User · Answer

Yes  it is possible  You can use text-align-last  text-align-last  center

User · Answer

x000D   x000D  select   x000D    text-align  center  x000D    text-align-last  center  x000D    x000D  option   x000D    text-align  left  x000D    x000D   lt select gt  x000D      lt option value    gt  please select a state  lt  option gt  x000D      lt option class  lt  value  --  gt none lt  option gt  x000D      lt option class  lt  value  AL  gt Alabama lt  option gt  x000D      lt option class  lt  value  AK  gt Alaska lt  option gt  x000D      lt option class  lt  value  AZ  gt Arizona lt  option gt  x000D      lt option class  lt  value  AR  gt Arkansas lt  option gt  x000D      lt option class  lt  value  CA  gt California lt  option gt  x000D      lt option class  lt  value  CO  gt Colorado lt  option gt  x000D   lt  select gt  x000D   x000D   x000D

User · Answer

While you cannot center the option text within a select  you can lay an absolutely positioned div over the top of the select to the same effect    centered     position  absolute    top  10px    left  10px    width  818px    height  37px    text-align  center    font  bold 24pt calibri    background-color  white    z-index  100      selectToCenter     position  absolute    top  10px    left  10px    width  840px    height  40px    font  bold 24pt calibri         selectToCenter   on  change   function              centered   text   this  find  option selected   text           lt select id  selectToCenter  gt  lt  select gt   lt div id  centered  gt  lt  div gt    Make sure the both the div and select have fixed positions in the document

User · Answer

There is a partial solution for Chrome   select   width  400px  text-align-last center      It does center the selected option  but not the options inside the dropdown

User · Answer

It s not 100  yet  but you can use this snippet   text-align-last  center     For Chrome text-align  center     For Firefox  Doesn t work on Safari or Edge  for now

User · Answer

This JS function should work for you  function getTextWidth txt      var  elm       lt span class  tempforSize  gt   txt   lt  span gt    prependTo  body      var elmWidth    elm width       elm remove      return elmWidth    function centerSelect  elm        var optionWidth   getTextWidth  elm children   selected   html        var emptySpace      elm width  - optionWidth       elm css  text-indent    emptySpace 2  - 10     -10 for some browers to remove the right toggle control width      on start      centerSelect   each function      centerSelect   this           on change     centerSelect   on  change   function      centerSelect   this          Full Codepen here  http   codepen io anon pen NxyovL

User · Answer

2020  Im using   select       text-align  center      text-align-last  center      -moz-text-align-last  center

User · Answer

if the options are static  you could listen for the change event on your select box and add padding for each individual item      id   change function         var select       id        var val     this  val         switch val            case  ValOne               select css  padding-left    30px                break          case  ValTwoLonger               select css  padding-left    20px                 break          default              return

User · Answer

On your select use width  auto and no padding to see how long your text is  I m using 100  available width on my select and all of my options have the same length  this allows me to use very simple css  text-indent will move the text from left  similar to padding-left 120px is my text length - I want to center it so take half of that size and half of the select size  leaving me with 50  - 60px select    width  100     text-indent  calc 50  - 60px      What if I have different sizes of options  It is possible  however  the solution will not be a pretty one  The former solution might get you really close to being centered if the difference between options isn t like 5 characters  If you still need to center it more precisely you can do this Prepare this class   realWidth     width  auto     Apply onChange listener to select element In that listener apply  realWidth to the select element with const selectRef   document getElementById  quot yourId quot    selectRef classList add  quot realWidth quot     Get access to the real width of the option  const widthOfSelect   selectRef getBoundingClientRect   width   2   widthOfSelect is the width you are looking for  Store it in global component variable  Remove the realWidth  you don t need it anymore  selectRef classList remove  quot realWidth quot     I am using react  I m not sure this will work in vanilla  if not you have to find another solution   lt select style   textIndent  calc 50  -   widthOfSelect       gt       lt  select gt   Another solution  however  that is a bad one could be creating the CSS classes with js and putting it to head  PROS   probably works  I haven t tried the dynamic solution but it should work   CONS   if the program is not fast enough user will see the width  auto taking place and thus wonder what s going on  If that is the case just create duplicate select  hide it behind something with a higher z-index and apply the on select listener from the original to the hidden duplicate  Might be hard to use if you cant inline the style because of vanilla limitation  but you can make a script to optimize the appendChild to the head

User · Answer

If you didn t find any solution  you can use this trick on angularjs or using js to map selected value with a text on the div  this solution is full css compliant on angular but need a mapping between select and div    x000D   x000D  var myApp   angular module  myApp        x000D   x000D  myApp controller  selectCtrl      scope   x000D    function  scope    x000D       scope value       x000D   x000D   x000D      x000D      x000D   ghostSelect   x000D    opacity  0 1  x000D       Should be 0 to avoid the select visibility but not visibility hidden   x000D    display  block  x000D    width  200px  x000D    position  absolute  x000D    x000D   select   x000D    border  1px solid black  x000D    height  20px  x000D    width  200px  x000D    text-align  center  x000D    border-radius  5px  x000D    display  block  x000D    x000D   lt  doctype html gt  x000D   lt html lang  en  gt  x000D   x000D   lt head gt  x000D     lt meta charset  UTF-8  gt  x000D     lt title gt Example - example-guide-concepts-1-production lt  title gt  x000D     lt script src  https   ajax googleapis com ajax libs angularjs 1 2 23 angular min js  gt  lt  script gt  x000D   lt  head gt  x000D   lt body ng-app  myApp  gt  x000D     lt div ng-app ng-controller  selectCtrl  gt  x000D       lt div class select gt  x000D         lt select ng-model  value  class  ghostSelect  gt  x000D           lt option value  Option 1  gt Option 1 lt  option gt  x000D           lt option value  Option 2  gt Option 2 lt  option gt  x000D           lt option value  Option 3  gt Option 3 lt  option gt  x000D         lt  select gt  x000D         lt div gt   value   x000D         lt  div gt  x000D       lt  div gt  x000D     lt  div gt  x000D   lt  body gt  x000D   x000D   x000D    Hope this could be useful for someone as it took me one day to find this solution on phonegap

User · Answer

Alternative  fake  solution if you have a list with options similar in text length  page select for example    padding-left  calc 50  - 1em     This works in Chrome  Firefox and Edge  The trick is here to push the text from the left to the center  then substract the half of length in px  em or whatever of the option text     Best solution IMO  in 2017  is still replacing the select via JS and build your own fake select-box with divs or whatever and bind click events on it for cross-browser support

User · Answer

try this    select       padding-left  50   important      width  100

User · Answer

That s for align right  Try it   select      text-align-last right      padding-right  29px      direction  rtl      the browser support for the text-align-last attribute can be found here  https   www w3schools com cssref css3 pr text-align-last asp  It looks like only Safari is still not supporting it

User · Answer

I ran into this issue where a client was insisting on this  and they were on a Mac and and iPhone  I wound up using media queries and a percentage padding for padding-left  Was this a satisfying solution  Not at all  but it let me move on

User · Answer

You can t really customise  lt select gt  or  lt option gt  much  The only way  cross-browser  would be to manually create a drop down with divs and css js to create something similar

User · Answer

I m afraid this isn t possible with plain CSS  and won t be possible to make completely cross-browser compatible   However  using a jQuery plugin  you could style the dropdown   https   www filamentgroup com lab jquery-ui-selectmenu-an-aria-accessible-plugin-for-styling-a-html-select html  This plugin hides the select element  and creates span elements etc on the fly to display a custom drop down list style  I m quite confident you d be able to change the styles on the spans etc to center align the items

User · Answer

this worked for me   text-align  center  text-align-last  center

User · Answer

You have to put the CSS rule into the select class    Use CSS text-indent  Example   lt select class  day  gt     option 1 option 2 option 3 option 4 option 5 here     lt  select gt    CSS code   select   text-indent  5px

User · Answer

I have always gotten away with the following hack to get it to work with css only   padding-left  45   font-size  50px    padding will center the text and can be tweaked for the text size     This is obviously not 100  correct from a validation point of view I guess but it does the job

[css] Is it possible to center text in select box?

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