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CanvasRenderingContext2D: beginPath() method

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.beginPath() method of the Canvas 2D API starts a new path by emptying the list of sub-paths. Call this method when you want to create a new path.

Note: To create a new sub-path, i.e., one matching the current canvas state, you can use CanvasRenderingContext2D.moveTo().

Syntax

beginPath()

Parameters

None.

Return value

None (undefined).

Examples

Creating distinct paths

This example creates two paths, each of which contains a single line.

HTML

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

JavaScript

The beginPath() method is called before beginning each line, so that they may be drawn with different colors.

const canvas = document.getElementById("canvas");
const ctx = canvas.getContext("2d");

// First path
ctx.beginPath();
ctx.strokeStyle = "blue";
ctx.moveTo(20, 20);
ctx.lineTo(200, 20);
ctx.stroke();

// Second path
ctx.beginPath();
ctx.strokeStyle = "green";
ctx.moveTo(20, 20);
ctx.lineTo(120, 120);
ctx.stroke();

Result

Specifications

Specification
HTML> # dom-context-2d-beginpath-dev>

Browser compatibility

	Desktop					Mobile
	Chrome	Edge	Firefox	Opera	Safari	Chrome Android	Firefox for Android	Opera Android	Safari on IOS	Samsung Internet	WebView Android	WebView on iOS
`beginPath`	1	12	1.5	≤12.1	2	18	4	≤12.1	1	1.0	4.4	1