Error: message
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.
Themessage data property of anError instance is a human-readable description of the error.
Value
A string corresponding to the value passed to theError() constructor as the first argument.
Property attributes ofError: message | |
|---|---|
| Writable | yes |
| Enumerable | no |
| Configurable | yes |
Description
This property contains a brief description of the error if one is available or has been set. Themessage property combined with thename property is used by theError.prototype.toString() method to create a string representation of the Error.
By default, themessage property is an empty string, but this behavior can be overridden for an instance by specifying a message as the first argument to theError constructor.
Examples
Throwing a custom error
js
const e = new Error("Could not parse input");// e.message is 'Could not parse input'throw e;Specifications
| Specification |
|---|
| ECMAScript® 2026 Language Specification # sec-error.prototype.message |