Selecting all text in HTML text input when clicked

Question

I have the following code to display a textbox in a HTML webpage    lt input type  text  id  userid  name  userid  value  Please enter the user ID    gt    When the page displays  the text contains the Please enter the user ID message  However  I found that the user needs to click 3 times in order to select all the text  in this case it is Please enter the user ID     Is it possible to select the entire text with only one click   Edit   Sorry  I forgot to say  I must use the input type  text

User · Answer

If you are just trying to have placeholder text that gets replaced when a user selects the element then it is obviously best practice to use placeholder attribute nowadays. However, if you want to select all of the current value when a field gains focus then a combination of @Cory House and @Toastrackenigma answers seems to be most canonical. Use focus and focusout events, with handlers that set/release the current focus element, and select all when focused. An angular2/typescript example is as follows (but would be trivial to convert to vanilla js):

Template:

<input type="text" (focus)="focus()" (focusout)="focusout()" ... >

Component:

private focused = false;

public focusout = (): void => {
    this.focused = false;
};

public focus = (): void => {
    if(this.focused) return;
    this.focused = true;

    // Timeout for cross browser compatibility (Chrome)
    setTimeout(() => { document.execCommand('selectall', null, false); });
};

User · Answer

Html like this   lt input type  text  value  click the input to select  onclick  javascript textSelector this    gt    and javascript code without bind  function textSelector ele         ele  select

User · Answer

The answers listed are partial according to me  I have linked below two examples of how to do this in Angular and with JQuery  This solution has the following features   Works for all browsers that support JQuery  Safari  Chrome  IE  Firefox  etc  Works for Phonegap Cordova  Android and IOs  Only selects all once after input gets focus until next blur and then focus Multiple inputs can be used and it does not glitch out  Angular directive has great re-usage simply add directive select-all-on-click JQuery can be modified easily  JQuery  http   plnkr co edit VZ0o2FJQHTmOMfSPRqpH p preview    quot input quot   blur function       if    this  attr  quot data-selected-all quot          Remove atribute to allow select all again on focus             this  removeAttr  quot data-selected-all quot                quot input quot   click function       if     this  attr  quot data-selected-all quot          try           this  selectionStart   0          this  selectionEnd     this  value length   1          add atribute allowing normal selecting post focus         this  attr  quot data-selected-all quot   true         catch  err            this  select            add atribute allowing normal selecting post focus         this  attr  quot data-selected-all quot   true                  Angular  http   plnkr co edit llcyAf p preview var app   angular module  app          add select-all-on-click to any input to use directive app directive  selectAllOnClick    function       return       restrict   A       link  function scope  element  attrs          var hasSelectedAll   false        element on  click   function  event            if   hasSelectedAll              try                 iOS  Safari  thows exception on Chrome etc             this selectionStart   0              this selectionEnd   this value length   1              hasSelectedAll   true              catch  err                  Non iOS option if not supported  e g  Chrome             this select                hasSelectedAll   true                                          On blur reset hasSelectedAll to allow full select       element on  blur   function  event            hasSelectedAll   false

User · Answer

The previously posted solutions have two quirks   In Chrome the selection via  select   doesn t stick - adding a slight timeout resolves this issue  It s impossible to place the cursor at a desired point after focus   Here s a complete solution that selects all text on focus  but allows selecting a specific cursor point after focus    function          var focusedElement        document  on  focus    input   function              if  focusedElement    this  return    already focused  return so user can now place cursor at specific point in input          focusedElement   this          setTimeout function      focusedElement select       100     select all text in any field on focus for easy re-entry  Delay sightly to allow focus to  quot stick quot  before selecting

User · Answer

Well this is normal activity for a TextBox   Click 1 - Set focus  Click 2 3  double click  - Select text  You could set focus on the TextBox when the page first loads to reduce the  select  to a single double-click event

User · Answer

Here s an example in React  but it can be translated to jQuery on vanilla JS if you prefer   class Num extends React Component        click   ev   gt            const el   ev currentTarget          if document activeElement     el                setTimeout      gt                    el select                       0                        render             return  lt input type  number  min  0  step  15  onMouseDown  this click      this props    gt            The trick here is to use onMouseDown because the element has already received focus by the time the  click  event fires  and thus the activeElement check will fail    The activeElement check is necessary so that they user can position their cursor where they want without constantly re-selecting the entire input   The timeout is necessary because otherwise the text will be selected and then instantly unselected  as I guess the browser does the cursor-positioning check afterwords   And lastly  the el   ev currentTarget is necessary in React because React re-uses event objects and you ll lose the synthetic event by the time the setTimeout fires

User · Answer

If you are using AngularJS  you can use a custom directive for easy access   define   angular    function          angular module  selectionHelper            directive  selectOnClick   function              return               restrict   A               link  function  scope  element  attrs                                    element on  click   function                          this select                                                               Now one can just use it like this    lt input type  text  select-on-click       gt    The sample is with requirejs - so the first and the last line can be skipped if using something else

User · Answer

The problem with catching the click event is that each subsequent click within the text will select it again  whereas the user was probably expecting to reposition the cursor   What worked for me was declaring a variable  selectSearchTextOnClick  and setting it to true by default  The click handler checks that the variable s still true  if it is  it sets it to false and performs the select    I then have a blur event handler which sets it back to true   Results so far seem like the behavior I d expect    Edit  I neglected to say that I d tried catching the focus event as someone suggested but that doesn t work  after the focus event fires  the click event can fire  immediately deselecting the text

User · Answer

Here s a reusable version of Shoban s answer    lt input type  text  id  userid  name  userid   value  Please enter the user ID  onfocus  Clear this      gt   function Clear elem    elem value         That way you can reuse the clear script for multiple elements

User · Answer

Note  When you consider onclick  this select     At the first click  All characters will be selected  After that maybe you wanted to edit something in input and click among characters again but it will select all characters again  To fix this problem you should use onfocus instead of onclick

User · Answer

This question has options for when  select   is not working on mobile platforms  Programmatically selecting text in an input field on iOS devices  mobile Safari

User · Answer

I was looking for a CSS-only solution and found this works for iOS browsers  tested safari and chrome   It does not have the same behavior on desktop chrome  but the pain of selecting is not as great there because you have a lot more options as a user  double-click  ctrl-a  etc    select-all-on-touch       -webkit-user-select  all      user-select  all

User · Answer

You can always use document execCommand  supported in all major browsers   document execCommand  selectall  null false     Selects all text in the currently focused element

User · Answer

You can replace   lt input type  text  id  userid  name  userid  value  Please enter the user ID    gt    With    lt input type  text  id  userid  name  userid  placeholder  Please enter the user ID    gt    The placeholder is used to replace value as how you wanted people to be able to Type in the text box without having to click multiple times or using ctrl   a  Placeholder makes it so it isn t a value but as the name suggests a place holder  That is what is used in multiple online forms that says  Username here  or  Email  and when you click on it the  Email  disappears and you can start typing right away

User · Answer

You can use this javascript snippet    lt input onClick  this select     value  Sample Text    gt    But apparently it doesn t work on mobile Safari  In those cases you can use    lt input onClick  this setSelectionRange 0  this value length   value  Sample Text    gt

User · Answer

If you are looking for a pure vanilla javascript method  you can also use  document createRange   selectNodeContents  element     This will select all the text and is supported by all major browsers  To trigger the selection on focus  you just need to add the event listener like so  document querySelector  element   addEventListener   focusin   function           document createRange   selectNodeContents  this           If you want to place it inline in your HTML  then you can do this   lt input type  quot text quot  name  quot myElement quot  onFocus  quot document createRange   selectNodeContents this   quot  value  quot Some text to select quot    gt   This is just another option  There appears to be a few ways of doing this   document execCommand  quot selectall quot   as mentioned here as well   x000D   x000D  document querySelector   myElement1   addEventListener  focusin   function        document createRange   selectNodeContents this        x000D   lt p gt Cicking inside field will not trigger the selection  but tabbing into the fields will  lt  p gt   lt label for    gt JS File Example lt label gt  lt br gt   lt input id  myElement1  value  This is some text    gt  lt br gt   lt br gt   lt label for    gt Inline example lt  label gt  lt br gt   lt input id  myElement2  value  This also is some text  onfocus  document createRange   selectNodeContents  this       gt  x000D   x000D   x000D

User · Answer

Use  placeholder  instead of  value  in your input field

User · Answer

Indeed  use onclick  this select     but remember not to combine it with disabled  disabled  - it will not work then and you will need to manually select or multi-click to select  still  If you wish to lock the content value to be selected  combine with the attribute readonly

User · Answer

Try   onclick  this select      It works great for me

User · Answer

The exact solution to what you asked is     lt input type  text  id  userid  name  userid  value  Please enter the user ID  onClick  this setSelectionRange 0  this value length    gt    But I suppose you are trying to show  Please enter the user ID  as a placeholder or hint in the input  So you can use the following as a more efficient solution    lt input type  text  id  userid  name  userid  placeholder  Please enter the user ID    gt

User · Answer

I know this is old  but the best option is to now use the new placeholder HTML attribute if possible    lt input type  text  id  userid  name  userid  placeholder  Please enter the user ID    gt    This will cause the text to show unless a value is entered  eliminating the need to select text or clear inputs

User · Answer

Html  you ll have to put the onclick attribute on every input you want it to work for on the page     lt input type  text  value  click the input to select  onclick  this select      gt    OR A BETTER OPTION    jQuery  this will work for every text input on the page  no need to change your html      lt script  type  text javascript  src    ajax googleapis com ajax libs jquery 1 7 1 jquery js  gt  lt  script gt     lt script type  text javascript  gt        function              document  on  click   input type text   function    this select                 lt  script gt

User · Answer

input autofocus  with onfocus event    lt INPUT onfocus  this select    TYPE  TEXT  NAME  thing  autofocus gt    This lets you open a form with the desired element selected  It works by using autofocus to hit the input  which then sends itself an onfocus event  which in turn selects the text

User · Answer

If anyone want to do this on page load w  jQuery  sweet for search fields  here is my solution  jQuery fn focusAndSelect   function         return this each function               this  focus            if  this setSelectionRange                var len     this  val   length   2              this setSelectionRange 0  len             else                 this  val   this  val                       this scrollTop   999999               function               input   focusAndSelect       jQuery     Based on this post   Thanks to CSS-Tricks com

[javascript] Selecting all text in HTML text input when clicked

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