Anyway to prevent the Blue highlighting of elements in Chrome when clicking quickly?

Question

Most of the time I'm not worried about it but I have an image carousel and if I click on the next and previous divs quickly, they will be highlighted in Chrome.

I tried using outline:none but no effect. Are there any solutions out there?

Answer 1

For Chrome on Android, you can use the -webkit-tap-highlight-color CSS property:

-webkit-tap-highlight-color is a non-standard CSS property that sets the color of the highlight that appears over a link while it's being tapped. The highlighting indicates to the user that their tap is being successfully recognized, and indicates which element they're tapping on.

To remove the highlighting completely, you can set the value to transparent:

-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;

Be aware that this might have consequences on accessibility: see outlinenone.com

Answer 2

You can use pure CSS to accomplish this. Here's a rundown for multi-browser support, chrome being covered by the first line and the final :focus bit. Details below.

.noSelect {
    -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;
    -webkit-touch-callout: none;
    -webkit-user-select: none;
    -khtml-user-select: none;
    -moz-user-select: none;
    -ms-user-select: none;
    user-select: none;
}
.noSelect:focus {
    outline: none !important;
}

Simply add the class="noSelect" attribute to the element you wish to apply this class to. I would highly recommend giving this CSS solution a try. Some have suggested using JavaScript, but I believe this is the cleanest solution.

For Android/Safari mobile/Edge

-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; is the additional rule you may be looking for. Affects Chrome desktop (esp. with touchscreen) and mobile devices. Here's a warning about using this non-standard property, as well as some accessibility concerns with suggestions. Best practice is to replace the highlight with your own styling.

UPDATE: Later versions of Chrome...

A commenter on this answer pointed out :focus { outline: none !important;} is needed for newer versions of Chrome. Answer adapted to include this, as well! Ah, ever-changing standards.

Answer 3

I'm running Chrome version 60 and none of the previous CSS answers worked.

I found that Chrome was adding the blue highlight via the outline style. Adding the following CSS fixed it for me:

:focus {
    outline: none !important;
}

Answer 4

But, sometimes, even with user-select and touch-callout turned off, cursor: pointer; may cause this effect, so, just set cursor: default; and it'll work.

Answer 5

To remove the blue overlay on mobiles, you can use one of the following:

-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; /* transparent with keyword */
-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0,0,0,0); /* transparent with rgba */
-webkit-tap-highlight-color: hsla(0,0,0,0); /* transparent with hsla */
-webkit-tap-highlight-color: #00000000; /* transparent with hex with alpha */
-webkit-tap-highlight-color: #0000; /* transparent with short hex with alpha */

However, unlike other properties, you can't use

-webkit-tap-highlight-color: none; /* none keyword */

In DevTools, this will show up as an 'invalid property value' or something.

---

To remove the blue/black/orange outline when focused, use this:

:focus {
    outline: none; /* no outline - for most browsers */
    box-shadow: none; /* no box shadow - for some browsers or if you are using Bootstrap */
}

The reason why I removed the box-shadow is because Bootsrap (and some browsers) sometimes add it to focused elements, so you can remove it using this.

But if anyone is navigating with a keyboard, they will get very confused indeed, because they rely on this outline to navigate. So you can replace it instead

:focus {
    outline: 100px dotted #f0f; /* 100px dotted pink outline */
}

---

You can target taps on mobile using :hover or :active, so you could use those to help, possibly. Or it could get confusing.

---

Full code:

element {
    -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; /* remove tap highlight */
}
element:focus {
    outline: none; /* remove outline */
    box-shadow: none; /* remove box shadow */
}

---

Other information:

• If you would like to customise the -webkit-tap-highlight-color then you should set it to a semi-transparent color so the element underneath doesn't get hidden when tapped
• Please don't remove the outline from focused elements, or add some more styles for them.
• -webkit-tap-highlight-color has not got great browser support and is not standard. You can still use it, but watch out!

Answer 6

I had similar issue with <input type="range" /> and I solved it with

-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;

input[type="range"]{
  -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;
}

 <input type="range" id="volume" name="demo"
         min="0" max="11">
  <label for="volume">Demo</label>

Answer 7

Try creating a handler for select event on those elements and in the handler you can clear the selection.

Take a look at this:

Clear Text Selection with JavaScript

It's an example of clearing the selection. You'd only need to modify it to work only on the specific element that you need.

Answer 8

This works the best for me:

.noSelect:hover {
  background-color: white;
}