Element: blur event

The blur event fires when an element has lost focus. The main difference between this event and focusout is that focusout bubbles while blur does not.

The opposite of blur is focus.

This event is not cancelable and does not bubble.

Syntax

Use the event name in methods like addEventListener(), or set an event handler property.

addEventListener('blur', (event) => { });

onblur = (event) => { };

Event type

A FocusEvent. Inherits from Event.

Event UIEvent FocusEvent

Event properties

This interface also inherits properties from its parent UIEvent, and indirectly from Event.

FocusEvent.relatedTarget

An EventTarget representing a secondary target for this event. In some cases (such as when tabbing in or out a page), this property may be set to null for security reasons.

Examples

Simple example

HTML

<form id="form">
  <input type="text" placeholder="text input" />
  <input type="password" placeholder="password" />
</form>

JavaScript

const password = document.querySelector('input[type="password"]');

password.addEventListener('focus', (event) => {
  event.target.style.background = 'pink';
});

password.addEventListener('blur', (event) => {
  event.target.style.background = '';
});

Result

Event delegation

There are two ways of implementing event delegation for this event: by using the focusout event, or by setting the useCapture parameter of addEventListener() to true.

HTML

<form id="form">
  <input type="text" placeholder="text input" />
  <input type="password" placeholder="password" />
</form>

JavaScript

const form = document.getElementById('form');

form.addEventListener('focus', (event) => {
  event.target.style.background = 'pink';
}, true);

form.addEventListener('blur', (event) => {
  event.target.style.background = '';
}, true);

Result

Specifications

Specification
UI Events
# event-type-blur
HTML Standard
# handler-onblur

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

The value of Document.activeElement varies across browsers while this event is being handled (bug 452307): IE10 sets it to the element that the focus will move to, while Firefox and Chrome often set it to the body of the document.

See also