Move Caret to End of Input or Textarea

By  on  

One of the annoying parts of using the focus method of HTML elements is that they don't move the cursor to the end of INPUT or TEXTAREA elements if they already have content in them.  That's probably the last thing a user would want.  I was browsing through Stack Overflow when I found this gem:  a function that moves the cursor to the end of an INPUT or TEXTAREA on command!

function moveCursorToEnd(el) {
    if (typeof el.selectionStart == "number") {
        el.selectionStart = el.selectionEnd = el.value.length;
    } else if (typeof el.createTextRange != "undefined") {
        el.focus();
        var range = el.createTextRange();
        range.collapse(false);
        range.select();
    }
}

Simply pass the element to the function above and you'll see the caret move to the end of the element!  Caret management in the browser sucks, but this function makes it incredibly easy.  Enjoy!

Recent Features

  • By
    CSS Filters

    CSS filter support recently landed within WebKit nightlies. CSS filters provide a method for modifying the rendering of a basic DOM element, image, or video. CSS filters allow for blurring, warping, and modifying the color intensity of elements. Let's have...

  • By
    From Webcam to Animated GIF: the Secret Behind chat.meatspac.es!

    My team mate Edna Piranha is not only an awesome hacker; she's also a fantastic philosopher! Communication and online interactions is a subject that has kept her mind busy for a long time, and it has also resulted in a bunch of interesting experimental projects...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Fullscreen API

    As we move toward more true web applications, our JavaScript APIs are doing their best to keep up.  One very simple but useful new JavaScript API is the Fullscreen API.  The Fullscreen API provides a programmatic way to request fullscreen display from the user, and exit...

  • By
    Detect DOM Node Insertions with JavaScript and CSS Animations

    I work with an awesome cast of developers at Mozilla, and one of them in Daniel Buchner. Daniel's shared with me an awesome strategy for detecting when nodes have been injected into a parent node without using the deprecated DOM Events API.

Discussion

  1. Brilliant piece of code..!! As always, I really enjoy your nifty scripts and this one made my day.
    Many Thanks David.

  2. Hello! Did you know you can also do a slight variation on the input.value = input.value; hack to make it work cross browser, something like:

    function focusAtEnd(el) {
      el.focus();
      var s = el.value;
      el.value = '';
      el.value = s;
    }
    
    • Thanks for commenting Chris! That will work but occasionally you see the “content flash” which is less than ideal.

  3. Agreed. Plus, I can’t imagine it’s very future proof relying on the behavioiur of the caret when setting the value. Your method is definitely the right way to do it.

  4. What if the user had clicked a very precise word to edit it ? Wont it be annoying to have the cursor at the end of the input when you clicked the beginning ? Maybe this method should only be used when the user is accessing a field with the tab key.

  5. Gergő Gyula

    Great snippet, just what I needed, thank you!!!

  6. Josef

    I don’t believe that this will work in Chrome on type=number inputs.

  7. Daniel Lidström

    Does it also scroll the text left so that the cursor is visible? This is a problem on iOS when the text is longer than the width of the input element.

  8. Sándor Hatvani

    Thank you.

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!