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HTMLTextAreaElement: select event

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 select event fires when some text has been selected.

Syntax

Use the event name in methods like addEventListener(), or set an event handler property.

addEventListener("select", (event) => { })

onselect = (event) => { }

Event type

A generic Event.

Examples

Selection logger

<textarea>Try selecting some text in this element.</textarea>
<p id="log"></p>

function logSelection(event) {
  const log = document.getElementById("log");
  const selection = event.target.value.substring(
    event.target.selectionStart,
    event.target.selectionEnd,
  );
  log.textContent = `You selected: ${selection}`;
}

const textarea = document.querySelector("textarea");
textarea.addEventListener("select", logSelection);

onselect equivalent

You can also set up the event handler using the onselect property:

textarea.onselect = logSelection;

Specifications

Specification
HTML> # event-select>
HTML> # handler-onselect>

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
`select_event`	1	12	6	≤12.1	1	18	6	≤12.1	1	1.0	4.4	1