The popoverTargetAction property of the HTMLInputElement interface gets and sets the action to be performed ("hide", "show", or "toggle") on a popover element being controlled by an <input> element of type="button".

It reflects the value of the popovertargetaction HTML attribute.

An enumerated value. Possible values are:

"hide"

The button will hide a shown popover. If you try to hide an already hidden popover, no action will be taken.

"show"

The button will show a hidden popover. If you try to show an already showing popover, no action will be taken.

"toggle"

The button will toggle a popover between showing and hidden. If the popover is hidden, it will be shown; if the popover is showing, it will be hidden. If popoverTargetAction is not set, "toggle" is the default action that will be performed by the control button.

This example shows the basic use of the popover API with a "toggle" value set for the popoverTargetAction property. The popover attribute is set to "auto", so the popover can be closed ("light-dismissed") by clicking outside the popover area.

First we define an <input> of type="button" that we will use to show and hide the popover, and a <div> that will be the popover. In this case we don't set the popovertargetaction HTML attribute on the button or the popover attribute on the <div>, as we will be doing so programmatically.

<input id="toggleBtn" type="button" value="Toggle popover" />
<div id="mypopover">This is popover content!</div>

The JavaScript code first gets a handle to the <div> and <input> elements. It then defines a function to check for popover support.

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

// Check for popover API support.
function supportsPopover() {
  return HTMLElement.prototype.hasOwnProperty("popover");
}

If the popover API is supported the code sets the <div> element's popover attribute to "auto" and makes it the popover target of the toggle button. We then set the popoverTargetAction of the button to "toggle". If the popover API is not supported we change the text content of the <div> element to state this, and hide the toggle button.

if (supportsPopover()) {
  // Set the <div> element to be an auto popover
  popover.popover = "auto";
  // Set the button popover target to be the popover
  toggleBtn.popoverTargetElement = popover;

  // Set that the button toggles popover visibility
  toggleBtn.popoverTargetAction = "toggle";
} else {
  popover.textContent = "Popover API not supported.";
  toggleBtn.hidden = true;
}

You can try out the example below. Show and hide the popover by toggling the button. The "auto" popover can also be dismissed by selecting outside the bounds of the popover text.

This example shows how to use the "show" and "hide" values of the popoverTargetAction attribute.

The code is near identical to the previous example, except that there are two <button> elements, and the popover is set to "manual". A manual popover must be closed explicitly, and not "light dismissed" by selecting outside the popover area.

<input id="showBtn" type="button" value="Show popover" />
<input id="hideBtn" type="button" value="Hide popover" />
<div id="mypopover">This is popover content!</div>

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

const popover = document.getElementById("mypopover");
const showBtn = document.getElementById("showBtn");
const hideBtn = document.getElementById("hideBtn");

const popoverSupported = supportsPopover();

if (supportsPopover()) {
  // Set the <div> element be a manual popover
  popover.popover = "manual";

  // Set the button targets to be the popover
  showBtn.popoverTargetElement = popover;
  hideBtn.popoverTargetElement = popover;

  // Set the target actions to be show/hide
  showBtn.popoverTargetAction = "show";
  hideBtn.popoverTargetAction = "hide";
} else {
  popover.textContent = "Popover API not supported.";
  showBtn.hidden = true;
  hideBtn.hidden = true;
}

The popover can be displayed by selecting the "Show popover" button, and dismissed using the "Hide popover" button.

• Popover API