Selection.type

Experimental: This is an experimental technology
Check the Browser compatibility table carefully before using this in production.

The type read-only property of the Selection interface returns a DOMString describing the type of the current selection.

Syntax

value = sel.type

Value

A DOMString describing the type of the current selection. Possible values are:

  • None: No selection has currently been made.
  • Caret: The selection is collapsed (i.e. the caret is placed on some text, but no range has been selected).
  • Range: A range has been selected.

Example

In this example, the event handler will fire each time a new selection is made. console.log(selection.type) will return Caret or Range depending on whether the caret is placed at a single point in the text, or a range has been selected.

var selection;

document.onselectionchange = function() {
  console.log('New selection made');
  selection = document.getSelection();
  console.log(selection.type);
};

Specifications

Browser compatibility

Desktop Mobile
Chrome Edge Firefox Internet Explorer Opera Safari WebView Android Chrome Android Firefox for Android Opera Android Safari on IOS Samsung Internet
type
1
12
57
No
15
1.3
1
18
57
14
1
1.0

See also

© 2005–2021 MDN contributors.
Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License v2.5 or later.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Selection/type