Symbol.prototype.description
Baseline Widely available
This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since January 2020.
The description accessor property of Symbol values returns a string containing the description of this symbol, or undefined if the symbol has no description.
Try it
console.log(Symbol("desc").description);
// Expected output: "desc"
console.log(Symbol.iterator.description);
// Expected output: "Symbol.iterator"
console.log(Symbol.for("foo").description);
// Expected output: "foo"
console.log(`${Symbol("foo").description}bar`);
// Expected output: "foobar"
Description
Symbol objects can be created with an optional description which can be used for debugging but not to access the symbol itself. The Symbol.prototype.description property can be used to read that description. It is different to Symbol.prototype.toString() as it does not contain the enclosing "Symbol()" string. See the examples.
Examples
Using description
js
Symbol("desc").toString(); // "Symbol(desc)"
Symbol("desc").description; // "desc"
Symbol("").description; // ""
Symbol().description; // undefined
// well-known symbols
Symbol.iterator.toString(); // "Symbol(Symbol.iterator)"
Symbol.iterator.description; // "Symbol.iterator"
// global symbols
Symbol.for("foo").toString(); // "Symbol(foo)"
Symbol.for("foo").description; // "foo"
Specifications
| Specification |
|---|
| ECMAScript® 2026 Language Specification # sec-symbol.prototype.description |