HTML DOM innerText Property
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HTML DOM innerText Property

Element Object

Example

Get the inner text of an element:

var x = document.getElementById("myBtn").innerText;
Try it Yourself »

More "Try it Yourself" examples below.


Definition and Usage

The innerText property sets or returns the text content of the specified node, and all its descendants.

If you set the innerText property, any child nodes are removed and replaced by a single Text node containing the specified string.

Note: This property is similar to the textContent property, however there are some differences:

  • textContent returns the text content of all elements, while innerText returns the content of all elements, except for <script> and <style> elements.
  • innerText will not return the text of elements that are hidden with CSS (textContent will). Try it »

Tip: To set or return the HTML content of an element, use the innerHTML property.


Browser Support

The numbers in the table specify the first browser version that fully supports the property.

Property
innerText 4.0 10.0 45.0 3.0 9.6

Syntax

Return the text content of a node:

node.innerText

Set the text content of a node:

node.innerText = text

Property Values

Value Type Description
text String Specifies the text content of the specified node


Technical Details

Return Value: A String, representing the "rendered" text content of a node and all its descendants

More Examples

Example

This example demonstrates some of the differences between innerText, innerHTML and textContent:

<p id="demo">   This element has extra spacing     and contains <span>a span element</span>.</p>

<script>
function getInnerText() {
  alert(document.getElementById("demo").innerText)
}

function getHTML() {
  alert(document.getElementById("demo").innerHTML)
}

function getTextContent() {
  alert(document.getElementById("demo").textContent)
}
</script>
Try it Yourself »

Get the content of the <p> element above with the specified properties:

innerText returns: "This element has extra spacing and contains a span element."
innerHTML returns: "   This element has extra spacing     and contains <span>a span element</span>."
textContent returns: "   This element has extra spacing    and contains a span element."

The innerText property returns just the text, without spacing and inner element tags.
The innerHTML property returns the text, including all spacing and inner element tags.
The textContent property returns the text with spacing, but without inner element tags.


Element Object