GV

GeezerVison

The World Wide Web, restored to 800 pixels of glory.

Home|About|Gaming cabinet|Archives|How it works|Starter sites

On this site

  • MDN
  • HTML: Markup language
  • Elements
  • Global attributes
  • Attributes
  • See all…
  • Responsive images
  • HTML cheatsheet
  • Date & time formats
  • See all…
  • SVG
  • MathML
  • XML
  • CSS: Styling language

This view

  • Original page
  • New address

GeezerVison is showing developer.mozilla.org — HTMLInputElement: select event - Web APIs | MDN

HTMLInputElement: 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.

  • See full compatibility
  • Learn more

The select event of the HTMLInputElement interface fires when the selection's extent or direction is changed programmatically, or when the user selects text.

This event is not fired when nothing is selected and the caret is moved by the user. Only the selectionchange event fires in this case.

Syntax

Use the event name in addEventListener():

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

Alternatively, assign to the event handler property of the interface:

js
onselect = (event) => { }

Event type

A generic Event.

Examples

Selection logger

html
<input value="Try selecting some text in this element." />
<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 input = document.querySelector("input");
input.addEventListener("select", logSelection);

Using the onselect event handler property

You can also set up the event handler using the onselect property (but note that this replaces other event listeners added using onselect, if any):

js
input.onselect = logSelection;

Specifications

Specification
HTML
# event-select
HTML
# handler-onselect

Browser compatibility

Help improve MDN

Learn how to contribute

This page was last modified on Oct 28, 2026 by MDN contributors.

View this page on GitHub • Report a problem with this content
You are visitor 01402503 — GeezerVison does not store the pages you look up.
Best viewed with Netscape Navigator 4.7 or Internet Explorer 6 at 800×600. No cookies required.