How to Disable Text Selection in HTML with CSS

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Introduction

Sometimes you might want to disable text selection on a webpage to prevent users from selecting text in certain elements. This can be useful for preventing accidental text selections or enhancing the user experience in cases where selecting text isn't necessary, such as in buttons, headings, or specific components of a web page. In this guide, you'll learn how to disable text selection in HTML using only CSS.

Step 1: Basic HTML Structure

We will start with a simple HTML structure that contains some text and buttons where text selection should be disabled.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <title>Disable Text Selection</title>
</head>
<body>

    <!-- Step 1: Sample text and buttons -->
    <div class="container">
        <h1>This is a heading. Try to select the text here.</h1>
        <p>This is a paragraph. You can try to select this text, but it will be disabled for some elements below.</p>
        <button class="no-select">Do not select this button text</button>
        <p class="no-select">This paragraph text selection is disabled.</p>
    </div>

</body>
</html>

Explanation:

  • We have a heading (h1), a paragraph (p), and a button. We’ll disable text selection for certain elements using CSS.

Step 2: Use CSS to Disable Text Selection

Now, we will use the user-select CSS property to disable text selection for specific elements.

<head>
    <style>
        /* General body styling */
        body {
            font-family: Arial, sans-serif;
            margin: 20px;
        }

        /* Step 2: Disable text selection */
        .no-select {
            -webkit-user-select: none;  /* Chrome, Safari, Opera */
            -moz-user-select: none;     /* Firefox */
            -ms-user-select: none;      /* Internet Explorer/Edge */
            user-select: none;          /* Standard */
        }

        /* Optional: Style elements */
        button {
            padding: 10px 20px;
            background-color: #3498db;
            color: white;
            border: none;
            cursor: pointer;
            border-radius: 5px;
            font-size: 16px;
        }
    </style>
</head>

Explanation:

  • user-select: The user-select property is used to control the selection of text in the specified elements.
    • none: Disables text selection for the element.
    • Cross-browser compatibility: The property is prefixed with -webkit- for WebKit-based browsers (Chrome, Safari), -moz- for Firefox, and -ms- for Internet Explorer/Edge to ensure it works across all major browsers.
  • .no-select: This class is applied to elements where you want to disable text selection, like buttons or specific paragraphs.

Complete Example

Here’s the complete HTML and CSS code that disables text selection for specific elements:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <title>Disable Text Selection</title>
    <style>
        /* General body styling */
        body {
            font-family: Arial, sans-serif;
            margin: 20px;
        }

        /* Disable text selection */
        .no-select {
            -webkit-user-select: none;  /* Chrome, Safari, Opera */
            -moz-user-select: none;     /* Firefox */
            -ms-user-select: none;      /* Internet Explorer/Edge */
            user-select: none;          /* Standard */
        }

        /* Optional: Style elements */
        button {
            padding: 10px 20px;
            background-color: #3498db;
            color: white;
            border: none;
            cursor: pointer;
            border-radius: 5px;
            font-size: 16px;
        }
    </style>
</head>
<body>

    <!-- Sample text and buttons -->
    <div class="container">
        <h1>This is a heading. Try to select the text here.</h1>
        <p>This is a paragraph. You can try to select this text, but it will be disabled for some elements below.</p>
        <button class="no-select">Do not select this button text</button>
        <p class="no-select">This paragraph text selection is disabled.</p>
    </div>

</body>
</html>

Output

You can play with the above HTML in Online HTML Editor and Compiler. Here is the output of the above HTML page.:

Conclusion

In this guide, you learned how to disable text selection in HTML using the user-select property in CSS. This method works across major browsers and is useful in preventing text selection for specific elements, such as buttons, headings, or other areas where text selection is unnecessary. You can easily apply this technique to any element by adding the user-select: none property.

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