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.

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

html
<canvas id="canvas"></canvas>

JavaScript

js
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

html
<canvas id="canvas"></canvas>

JavaScript

js
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