Disable text selection in textarea

Question

I need to find a way to prevent users from selecting text in a textarea. The goal is to create a custom keyboard that is used to enter text in the textarea. I want users to be able to click on the textarea to set the caret position (which is already working right now). However, I don't want the users to be able to select certain parts of the inserted text, or there should at least be no visual indication of this. I have already tried a few things, such as the following CSS, but without success.

textarea {
    -moz-user-select: none;
    -webkit-user-select: none;
    -khtml-user-select: none;
    user-select: none;
}

The solution can be in CSS and/or JavaScript, and it only has to work in Google Chrome.

---

Disabling the textarea will not work for me. As I mentioned, I want users to be able to place the caret at certain positions by clicking on the location. If I would disable the textarea, this functionality would be lost.

Solution 1

A combination of the "readonly" property and "user-select" property works.

The 2nd rule disables the highlighted border on select, which is a kind of visual selection.

The "unselectable" property seems to be Opera/IE specific.

the styles:

.noselect {
   cursor: default;
   -webkit-user-select: none;
   -webkit-touch-callout: none;
   -khtml-user-select: none;
   -moz-user-select: none;
   -ms-user-select: none;
   -o-user-select: none;
}

.noselect:focus {
   outline: none;
}

the markup:

<textarea class="noselect" readonly="readonly" unselectable="on"></textarea>

read-only might be more suitable than disabled (one can still toggle with JS, upon click event).

Solution 2

<textarea unselectable="on" id="my_textarea"></textarea>

    *.unselectable {
   -webkit-user-select: none;
    }  

Solution 3

Below code can help you

JS Code:

$(document).ready(function(){
   $('#txtInput').bind("cut copy paste",function(e) {
      e.preventDefault();
   });
});

Comments

[Amyth]

The OP does not want to make the textarea read-only, he would just want the select functionality to be disabled.

[Pointy]

Has no effect in Firefox.

[Ankur Dhanuka]

by disabling the textarea, text selection can be done

[Pointy]

@AnkurDhanuka disabling the element will prevent keyboard events from being generated, so that probably won't work for the OP.

[HIRA THAKUR]

thats because user wants it only in chrome.We can add moz-user-select:none

[Pointy]

oops sorry, I missed that, and you're also right that -moz-user-select: none works! I think this is the right answer.

[Martin Zeitler]

@Gorky for reference: developers.google.com/web/updates/tags/removals ...if something had changed, it should be listed there (I'm in a hurry right now, no time to dig further).

[Gorky]

bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/… Looks like intentional for interop

[iampre409]

I tried just putting <textarea disabled></textarea> as w3schools and other suggest. This answer was the only way I was able to get it to work.