How to Select All HTML Input Element Text on Click Using JavaScript?

You can select all text in an HTML <input> element in the following ways:

• Select All Input Text When It's Clicked On;
• Select All Input Text When a Button is Clicked.

Select All Input Text When It's Clicked On

To select all text in an HTML <input> element when it's clicked on, you can use the HTMLInputElement.select() method, for example, in the following way:

<input
    type="text"
    value="Hello World!"
    onclick="this.select()"
/>

Alternatively, you may use the HTMLInputElement.setSelectionRange() method to achieve the same:

<input
    type="text"
    value="Hello World!"
    onclick="this.setSelectionRange(0, this.value.length)"
/>

If you do not wish to inline JavaScript, you may create an event handler function for the click event, for example, like so:

const input = document.getElementById('foo');

input.addEventListener('click', function (e) {
    e.target.select();
});

Or, alternatively, you can do the same using HTMLInputElement.setSelectionRange(), for example, like so:

const input = document.getElementById('foo');

input.addEventListener('click', function (e) {
    const target = e.target;
    target.setSelectionRange(0, target.value.length);
});

You will have to replace "foo" with the value you assign to the id attribute of the <input> element.

Select All Input Text When a Button is Clicked

Consider you have the following <input> and a "select all" <button> element:

<input type="text" id="foo" value="Hello world!" />
<button onclick="selectAllText('foo')">Select All</button>

You could implement the "selectAllText()" function (which is called when the button is clicked) as follows:

function selectAllText(id) {
    const input = document.getElementById(id);
    input.focus();
    input.select();
}

Or, alternatively, you could use HTMLInputElement.setSelectionRange() to achieve the same:

function selectAllText(id) {
    const input = document.getElementById(id);
    input.focus();
    input.setSelectionRange(0, input.value.length);
}

Calling HTMLElement.focus() is important as just using HTMLInputElement.select() (or HTMLInputElement.setSelectionRange()) will not necessarily focus the input.