HTMLTextAreaElement: selectionStart 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 selectionStart
property of the HTMLTextAreaElement
interface specifies the start position of the current text selection in a <textarea>
element. It is a number representing the beginning index of the selected text. It can be used to both retrieve and set the start of the index of the beginning of a <textarea>
s selected text.
When nothing is selected, the value of both the selectionStart
and selectionEnd
is the position of the cursor (caret) inside the <textarea>
element.
Setting selectionStart
to a value greater then the current value of selectionEnd
updates both the the selectionStart
and selectionEnd
properties to that value. If that value is equal to or greater than the textLength
, both properties are both set to the textLength
property value.
The property value can be retrieved and set without the <textarea>
having focus, but the element does need to have focus for the ::selection
pseudo-element to match the selected text.
Setting the selectionStart
to a new value fires the selectchange
and select
events.
Value
A non-negative number.
Examples
const textarea = document.getElementById("text-box");
const start = textarea.selectionStart;
Specifications
Specification |
---|
HTML Standard # dom-textarea/input-selectionstart |
Browser compatibility
BCD tables only load in the browser
See also
<textarea>
HTMLTextAreaElement
HTMLTextAreaElement.selectionEnd
HTMLTextAreaElement.selectionDirection
HTMLTextAreaElement.textLength
HTMLTextAreaElement.select()
HTMLTextAreaElement.setSelectionRange()
HTMLTextAreaElement.setRangeText()
HTMLInputElement.selectionStart
Selection
::selection
pseudo-element