HTMLTextAreaElement: selectionStart 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.
TheselectionStart property of theHTMLTextAreaElement interface specifies the start position of the current text selection in a<textarea> element. It is a number representing the beginning index of the selected text. It can be used to both retrieve and set the start of the index of the beginning of a<textarea>s selected text.
When nothing is selected, the value of both theselectionStart andselectionEnd is the position of the cursor (caret) inside the<textarea> element.
SettingselectionStart to a value greater than the current value ofselectionEnd updates both theselectionStart andselectionEnd properties to that value. If that value is equal to or greater than thetextLength, both properties are both set to thetextLength property value.
The property value can be retrieved and set without the<textarea> having focus, but the element does need to have focus for the::selection pseudo-element to match the selected text.
Setting theselectionStart to a new value fires theselectionchange andselect events.
Value
A non-negative number.
Examples
const textarea = document.getElementById("text-box");const start = textarea.selectionStart;Specifications
| Specification |
|---|
| HTML # dom-textarea/input-selectionstart |