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Symbol.prototype.description

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since ⁨January 2020⁩.

The description accessor property of Symbol values returns a string containing the description of this symbol, or undefined if the symbol has no description.

Try it

console.log(Symbol("desc").description);
// Expected output: "desc"

console.log(Symbol.iterator.description);
// Expected output: "Symbol.iterator"

console.log(Symbol.for("foo").description);
// Expected output: "foo"

console.log(`${Symbol("foo").description}bar`);
// Expected output: "foobar"

Description

Symbol objects can be created with an optional description which can be used for debugging but not to access the symbol itself. The Symbol.prototype.description property can be used to read that description. It is different to Symbol.prototype.toString() as it does not contain the enclosing "Symbol()" string. See the examples.

Examples

Using description

Symbol("desc").toString(); // "Symbol(desc)"
Symbol("desc").description; // "desc"
Symbol("").description; // ""
Symbol().description; // undefined

// well-known symbols
Symbol.iterator.toString(); // "Symbol(Symbol.iterator)"
Symbol.iterator.description; // "Symbol.iterator"

// global symbols
Symbol.for("foo").toString(); // "Symbol(foo)"
Symbol.for("foo").description; // "foo"

Specifications

Specification
ECMAScript® 2026 Language Specification> # sec-symbol.prototype.description>

Browser compatibility

	Desktop					Mobile							Server
	Chrome	Edge	Firefox	Opera	Safari	Chrome Android	Firefox for Android	Opera Android	Safari on IOS	Samsung Internet	WebView Android	WebView on iOS	Bun	Deno	Node.js
`description`	70	79	63	57	12.1 12–12.1 No support for an undefined description.	70	63	49	12.2 12–12.2 No support for an undefined description.	10.0	70	12.2 12–12.2 No support for an undefined description.	1.0.0	1.0	11.0.0