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HTMLTextAreaElement: defaultValue 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 defaultValue property of the HTMLTextAreaElement interface represents the default text content of this text area. Getting and setting this value is equivalent to getting and setting textContent on the <textarea>.

Value

A string.

Examples

In the example below, the defaultValue still returns the value originally written in the HTML. If a default value is set, either via HTML or the defaultValue property, user input will update the value but will not overwrite the defaultValue.

const textareaElement = document.getElementById("comment");
console.log(textArea.defaultValue);
textArea.defaultValue = "This is the default text now!";

Specifications

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
defaultValue 1 12 1 ≤12.1 1 18 4 ≤12.1 1 1.0 4.4 1

See also

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https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLTextAreaElement/defaultValue