The innerText
property of the HTMLElement
interface represents the "rendered" text content of a node and its descendants. As a getter, it approximates the text the user would get if they highlighted the contents of the element with the cursor and then copied it to the clipboard.
Note: innerText
is easily confused with Node.textContent
, but there are important differences between the two. Basically, innerText
is aware of the rendered appearance of text, while textContent
is not.
Syntax
const renderedText = htmlElement.innerText htmlElement.innerText = string
Value
A DOMString
representing the rendered text content of an element. If the element itself is not being rendered (e.g detached from the document or is hidden from view), the returned value is the same as the Node.textContent
property.
Example
This example compares innerText
with Node.textContent
. Note how innerText
is aware of things like <br>
elements, and ignores hidden elements.
HTML
<h3>Source element:</h3> <p id="source"> <style>#source { color: red; } #text { text-transform: uppercase; }</style> <span id=text>Take a look at<br>how this text<br>is interpreted below.</span> <span style="display:none">HIDDEN TEXT</span> </p> <h3>Result of textContent:</h3> <textarea id="textContentOutput" rows="6" cols="30" readonly>...</textarea> <h3>Result of innerText:</h3> <textarea id="innerTextOutput" rows="6" cols="30" readonly>...</textarea>
JavaScript
const source = document.getElementById("source"); const textContentOutput = document.getElementById("textContentOutput"); const innerTextOutput = document.getElementById("innerTextOutput"); textContentOutput.value = source.textContent; innerTextOutput.value = source.innerText;
Result
Specification
Specification | Status | Comment |
---|---|---|
HTML Living Standard The definition of 'innerText' in that specification. |
Living Standard | Introduced, based on the draft of the innerText specification. See whatwg/html#465 and whatwg/compat#5 for history. |
Browser compatibility
Desktop | Mobile | |||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
innerText | Chrome Full support 1 | Edge Full support 12 | Firefox Full support 45 | IE Full support 5.5 | Opera Full support 9.6 | Safari Full support 3 | WebView Android Full support 4.4 | Chrome Android Full support 18 | Firefox Android Full support 45 | Opera Android Full support 10.1 | Safari iOS Full support 4 | Samsung Internet Android Full support 1.0 |
Legend
- Full support
- Full support