Howto Place cursor at beginning of textarea

Question

I've found a couple resources for how to place the cursor in a textarea at the end of the text, but I can't sort out a simple way to make it appear at the beginning.

I'm prepopulating the textarea with some text and just want to make it easier on the users.

score 19 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 26 '09 at 18:28

Pass a reference to your textarea to this JS function.

function resetCursor(txtElement) { 
    if (txtElement.setSelectionRange) { 
        txtElement.focus(); 
        txtElement.setSelectionRange(0, 0); 
    } else if (txtElement.createTextRange) { 
        var range = txtElement.createTextRange();  
        range.moveStart('character', 0); 
        range.select(); 
    } 
}

score 8 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 28 '18 at 06:14

Depending on your needs, a simpler Javascript version is:

document.querySelector("textarea").focus(); //set the focus - cursor at end
document.querySelector("textarea").setSelectionRange(0,0); // place cursor at start

You can't just string them together either, to get rid of the double querySelector - not sure why.

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 15 '19 at 04:12

2

The jQuery way:

$('textarea[name="mytextarea"]').focus().setSelectionRange(0,0);

answered Dec 15 '19 at 04:12

tim

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1

This won't work. Should be: `$('textarea[name="mytextarea"]').focus().get(0).setSelectionRange(0,0);` ... the added `get(0)` is to expose the DOM element since `setSelectionRange()` is a DOM method rather than a jQuery one. – A. Genedy Jan 28 '22 at 00:15

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 13 '20 at 04:48

0

please, use for textarea with scroll after using $(textareaSelector).val(val)

$(textareaSelector)[0].setSelectionRange(0, 0);
$(textareaSelector).focus();

answered Aug 13 '20 at 04:48

andrei040191

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score -4 · Answer 5 · edited Dec 04 '16 at 11:49

-4

Removed the spaces between the tags
like this:

<textarea rows="5" cols="50" name="extra"></textarea>

edited Dec 04 '16 at 11:49

Sachith Muhandiram

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answered Dec 04 '16 at 11:15

Mack95

1
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Howto Place cursor at beginning of textarea

5 Answers5

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