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.

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

Event type

A generic Event.

Examples

Selection logger

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

js
textarea.onselect = logSelection; 

Specifications

Specification
HTML
# event-select
HTML
# handler-onselect

Browser compatibility

See also