CanvasRenderingContext2D: textAlign property
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
CanvasRenderingContext2D.textAlign
property of the Canvas 2D API specifies the current text alignment used when drawing
text.
The alignment is relative to the x
value of the
fillText()
method. For example, if
textAlign
is "center"
, then the text's left edge will be at
x - (textWidth / 2)
.
Value
Possible values:
"left"
-
The text is left-aligned.
"right"
-
The text is right-aligned.
"center"
-
The text is centered.
"start"
-
The text is aligned at the normal start of the line (left-aligned for left-to-right locales, right-aligned for right-to-left locales).
"end"
-
The text is aligned at the normal end of the line (right-aligned for left-to-right locales, left-aligned for right-to-left locales).
The default value is "start"
.
Examples
General text alignment
This example demonstrates the three "physical" values of the textAlign
property: "left"
, "center"
, and "right"
.
HTML
<canvas id="canvas"></canvas>
JavaScript
const canvas = document.getElementById("canvas");
canvas.width = 350;
const ctx = canvas.getContext("2d");
const x = canvas.width / 2;
ctx.beginPath();
ctx.moveTo(x, 0);
ctx.lineTo(x, canvas.height);
ctx.stroke();
ctx.font = "30px serif";
ctx.textAlign = "left";
ctx.fillText("left-aligned", x, 40);
ctx.textAlign = "center";
ctx.fillText("center-aligned", x, 85);
ctx.textAlign = "right";
ctx.fillText("right-aligned", x, 130);
Result
Direction-dependent text alignment
This example demonstrates the two direction-dependent values of the
textAlign
property: "start"
and "end"
. Note that
the direction
property is manually
specified as "ltr"
, although this is also the default for English-language
text.
HTML
<canvas id="canvas"></canvas>
JavaScript
const canvas = document.getElementById("canvas");
const ctx = canvas.getContext("2d");
ctx.font = "30px serif";
ctx.direction = "ltr";
ctx.textAlign = "start";
ctx.fillText("Start-aligned", 0, 50);
ctx.textAlign = "end";
ctx.fillText("End-aligned", canvas.width, 120);
Result
Specifications
Specification |
---|
HTML Standard # dom-context-2d-textalign-dev |
Browser compatibility
BCD tables only load in the browser
See also
- The interface defining this property:
CanvasRenderingContext2D