HTMLElement: popover property

Limited availability

This feature is not Baseline because it does not work in some of the most widely-used browsers.

The popover property of the HTMLElement interface gets and sets an element's popover state via JavaScript ("auto" or "manual"), and can be used for feature detection.

It reflects the value of the popover global HTML attribute.

Value

An enumerated value; possible values are:

  • "auto": In auto state:
    • The popover can be "light dismissed" — this means that you can hide the popover by clicking outside it or pressing the Esc key.
    • Usually, only one popover can be shown at a time — showing a second popover when one is already shown will hide the first one. The exception to this rule is when you have nested auto popovers. See Nested popovers for more details.
  • "manual": In manual state:
    • The popover cannot be "light dismissed", although declarative show/hide/toggle buttons will still work.
    • Multiple independent popovers can be shown at a time.

Examples

Feature detection

You can use the popover attribute to feature detect the Popover API:

js
function supportsPopover() {
  return HTMLElement.prototype.hasOwnProperty("popover");
}

Setting up a popover programmatically

js
const popover = document.getElementById("mypopover");
const toggleBtn = document.getElementById("toggleBtn");

const popoverSupported = supportsPopover();

if (popoverSupported) {
  popover.popover = "auto";
  toggleBtn.popoverTargetElement = popover;
  toggleBtn.popoverTargetAction = "toggle";
} else {
  console.log("Popover API not supported.");
}

Specifications

Specification
HTML Standard
# dom-popover

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also