How To Change Placeholder Color Using Javascript

The ::placeholder pseudo element (or a pseudo class, in some cases, depending on the browser implementation) allows you to style the placeholder text of a form element. As in, the text set with the placeholder attribute:

          <input type="email" placeholder="[email protected]">

You lot can style that text across virtually browsers with this smattering of vendor-prefixed selectors:

          ::-webkit-input-placeholder { /* Chrome/Opera/Safari */   color: pinkish; } ::-moz-placeholder { /* Firefox 19+ */   color: pink; } :-ms-input-placeholder { /* IE 10+ */   color: pinkish; } :-moz-placeholder { /* Firefox 18- */   color: pink; }

Important alarm: this syntax is non-standard, thus all the naming craziness. It doesn't appear in the spec at all. :placeholder-shown is standard, and even spec authors seem to recall ::placeholder will be the standardized version.

Like any psuedo, you can scope information technology to specific elements equally needed, like:

          input[type="email"].large-dog::-webkit-input-placeholder {   color: orange; }

Demo

The difference between `:placeholder-shown` and `::placeholder`

:placeholder-shown is for selecting the input itself when information technology's placeholder text is being shown. As opposed to ::placeholder which styles the placeholder text.

Here'due south a diagram:

I found this highly confusing as:

the specs only accept :placeholder-shown and non ::placeholder
:placeholder-shown can yet affect the styling of the placeholder text, since it'south a parent element (e.thou. font-size).

Note that :placeholder-shown is a pseudo course (it'southward an element in a particular state) and ::placeholder is a pseudo element (a visible matter that isn't really in the DOM). Distinguishable by single-versus-double colons.

Tab Atkins cleared it up for me via e-mail:

:placeholder-shown, being a pseudo-class, has to select an existing element – information technology selects the input whenever y'all're in the placeholder-showing state. The ::placeholder pseudo-element wraps the actual placeholder text.

Element or class?

This functionality is not standardized. That means that every browser has a unlike thought on how it should work.

Firefox originally implemented this as a pseudo grade, but changed it for a agglomeration of reasons. To brand a long story brusque, yous tin't practise as much with a pseudo form.

For instance, if yous want to change the color of the text when the input is focused. You would use a selector like input:focus::placeholder, which you wouldn't be able to do with a pseudo course (they don't stack the same way).

IE10 supports this as a pseudo class, rather than an chemical element. Everyone else has implemented a pseudo element.

Firefox placeholder color

You might notice how in Firefox the color of the placeholder looks faded when compared to other browsers. In the paradigm below, Firefox 43 is shown on the left whilst Chrome 47 is shown on the right:

The Chrome version is ideally the manner that we'd like to meet everywhere.

This is considering, by default, all placeholders in Firefox have an opacity value applied to them, so in order to set up this we demand to reset that value:

          ::-moz-placeholder {   opacity: 1; }

You can come across more by testing this demo out in Firefox.

Supported Styles

The pseudo element supports styling of these properties:

font backdrop
color
background properties
discussion-spacing
letter of the alphabet-spacing
text-decoration
vertical-align
text-transform
line-height
text-indent
opacity

The pseudo course supports nigh (if not all) of these properties also, but isn't as flexible for the reasons outlined above.

Browser support

Desktop

Chrome	Firefox	IE	Border	Safari
57	19*	No	79	ten.one

Mobile / Tablet

Android Chrome	Android Firefox	Android	iOS Safari
101	100	101	10.3

Other resources

MDN Docs
"The CSS3 Placeholder Pseudo-chemical element" past Guil Hernandez
"Styling HTML placeholder attribute" past Mounir Lamouri
"Styling Placeholders" past Tab Atkins