String.prototype.includes()

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since September 2015.

The includes() method of String values performs a case-sensitive search to determine whether a given string may be found within this string, returning true or false as appropriate.

Try it

Syntax

js
includes(searchString)
includes(searchString, position)

Parameters

searchString

A string to be searched for within str. Cannot be a regex. All values that are not regexes are coerced to strings, so omitting it or passing undefined causes includes() to search for the string "undefined", which is rarely what you want.

position Optional

The position within the string at which to begin searching for searchString. (Defaults to 0.)

Return value

true if the search string is found anywhere within the given string, including when searchString is an empty string; otherwise, false.

Exceptions

TypeError

Thrown if searchString is a regex.

Description

This method lets you determine whether or not a string includes another string.

Case-sensitivity

The includes() method is case sensitive. For example, the following expression returns false:

js
"Blue Whale".includes("blue"); // returns false

You can work around this constraint by transforming both the original string and the search string to all lowercase:

js
"Blue Whale".toLowerCase().includes("blue"); // returns true

Examples

Using includes()

js
const str = "To be, or not to be, that is the question.";

console.log(str.includes("To be")); // true
console.log(str.includes("question")); // true
console.log(str.includes("nonexistent")); // false
console.log(str.includes("To be", 1)); // false
console.log(str.includes("TO BE")); // false
console.log(str.includes("")); // true

Specifications

Specification
ECMAScript Language Specification
# sec-string.prototype.includes

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also