Use JavaScript to place cursor at end of text in text input element

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What is the best way (and I presume simplest way) to place the cursor at the end of the text in a input text element via JavaScript – after focus has been set to the element?

34 Answers
34

There’s a simple way to get it working in most browsers.

this.selectionStart = this.selectionEnd = this.value.length;

However, due to the *quirks of a few browsers, a more inclusive answer looks more like this

setTimeout(function(){ that.selectionStart = that.selectionEnd = 10000; }, 0);

Using jQuery (to set the listener, but it’s not necessary otherwise)

$('#el').focus(function(){
  var that = this;
  setTimeout(function(){ that.selectionStart = that.selectionEnd = 10000; }, 0);
});
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<input id='el' type="text" value="put cursor at end">

Using Vanilla JS (borrowing addEvent function from this answer)

// Basic cross browser addEvent
function addEvent(elem, event, fn){
if(elem.addEventListener){
  elem.addEventListener(event, fn, false);
}else{
  elem.attachEvent("on" + event,
  function(){ return(fn.call(elem, window.event)); });
}}
var element = document.getElementById('el');

addEvent(element,'focus',function(){
  var that = this;
  setTimeout(function(){ that.selectionStart = that.selectionEnd = 10000; }, 0);
});
<input id='el' type="text" value="put cursor at end">

Quirks

Chrome has an odd quirk where the focus event fires before the cursor is moved into the field; which screws my simple solution up. Two options to fix this:

  1. You can add a timeout of 0 ms (to defer the operation until the stack is clear)
  2. You can change the event from focus to mouseup. This would be pretty annoying for the user unless you still kept track of focus. I’m not really in love with either of these options.

Also, @vladkras pointed out that some older versions of Opera incorrectly calculate the length when it has spaces. For this you can use a huge number that should be larger than your string.

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