---
title: HTMLElement.innerText
slug: Web/API/HTMLElement/innerText
translation_of: Web/API/HTMLElement/innerText
---
<div>{{APIRef("HTML DOM")}}</div>

<p><span class="seoSummary">The <code><strong>innerText</strong></code> property of the {{domxref("HTMLElement")}} interface represents the "rendered" text content of a node and its descendants.</span> As a getter, it approximates the text the user would get if they highlighted the contents of the element with the cursor and then copied it to the clipboard.</p>

<div class="blockIndicator note">
<p><strong>Note:</strong> <code>innerText</code> is easily confused with {{domxref("Node.textContent")}}, but there are important differences between the two. Basically, <code>innerText</code> is aware of the rendered appearance of text, while <code>textContent</code> is not.</p>
</div>

<h2 id="Syntax">Syntax</h2>

<pre class="syntaxbox notranslate">const <em>renderedText</em> = <em>htmlElement</em>.innerText
<em>htmlElement</em>.innerText = <em>string</em></pre>

<h3 id="Value">Value</h3>

<p>A {{domxref("DOMString")}} representing the rendered text content of an element. If the element itself is not <a href="https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/rendering.html#being-rendered">being rendered</a> (e.g detached from the document or is hidden from view), the returned value is the same as the {{domxref("Node.textContent")}} property.</p>

<h2 id="Example">Example</h2>

<p>This example compares <code>innerText</code> with {{domxref("Node.textContent")}}. Note how <code>innerText</code> is aware of things like {{htmlElement("br")}} elements, and ignores hidden elements.</p>

<h3 id="HTML">HTML</h3>

<pre class="brush: html notranslate">&lt;h3&gt;Source element:&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p id="source"&gt;
  &lt;style&gt;#source { color: red; }&lt;/style&gt;
Take a look at&lt;br&gt;how this text&lt;br&gt;is interpreted
       below.
  &lt;span style="display:none"&gt;HIDDEN TEXT&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;Result of textContent:&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;textarea id="textContentOutput" rows="6" cols="30" readonly&gt;...&lt;/textarea&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;Result of innerText:&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;textarea id="innerTextOutput" rows="6" cols="30" readonly&gt;...&lt;/textarea&gt;</pre>

<h3 id="JavaScript">JavaScript</h3>

<pre class="brush: js notranslate">const source = document.getElementById('source');
const textContentOutput = document.getElementById('textContentOutput');
const innerTextOutput = document.getElementById('innerTextOutput');

textContentOutput.innerHTML = source.textContent;
innerTextOutput.innerHTML = source.innerText;</pre>

<h3 id="Result">Result</h3>

<p>{{EmbedLiveSample("Example", 700, 450)}}</p>

<h2 id="Specification">Specification</h2>

<table class="standard-table">
 <thead>
  <tr>
   <th scope="col">Specification</th>
   <th scope="col">Status</th>
   <th scope="col">Comment</th>
  </tr>
 </thead>
 <tbody>
  <tr>
   <td>{{SpecName('HTML WHATWG', 'dom.html#the-innertext-idl-attribute', 'innerText')}}</td>
   <td>{{Spec2('HTML WHATWG')}}</td>
   <td>Introduced, based on the <a href="https://github.com/rocallahan/innerText-spec">draft of the innerText specification</a>. See <a href="https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/465">whatwg/html#465</a> and <a href="https://github.com/whatwg/compat/issues/5">whatwg/compat#5</a> for history.</td>
  </tr>
 </tbody>
</table>

<h2 id="Browser_compatibility">Browser compatibility</h2>



<p>{{Compat("api.HTMLElement.innerText")}}</p>

<h2 id="See_also">See also</h2>

<ul>
 <li>{{domxref("HTMLElement.outerText")}}</li>
 <li>{{domxref("Element.innerHTML")}}</li>
</ul>