This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.
The select() method of the HTMLTextAreaElement interface selects the entire contents of the <textarea> element. In addition, the select event is fired. The select() method does not take any parameters and does not return a value.
select()
None.
None (undefined).
const textarea = document.getElementById("text-box");
textarea.select();
| Specification |
|---|
| HTML> # dom-textarea/input-select-dev> |
| Desktop | Mobile | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chrome | Edge | Firefox | Opera | Safari | Chrome Android | Firefox for Android | Opera Android | Safari on IOS | Samsung Internet | WebView Android | WebView on iOS | |
select |
1 | 12 | 1 | ≤12.1 | 1 | 18 | 4 | ≤12.1 | 1 | 1.0 | 4.4 | 1 |
<textarea>select eventaddEventListener()::selection pseudo-element
© 2005–2025 MDN contributors.
Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License v2.5 or later.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLTextAreaElement/select