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 September 2015.

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® 2025 Language Specification
# sec-symbol.prototype.description

Browser compatibility

Report problems with this compatibility data on GitHub
desktopmobileserver
Chrome
Edge
Firefox
Opera
Safari
Chrome Android
Firefox for Android
Opera Android
Safari on iOS
Samsung Internet
WebView Android
WebView on iOS
Deno
Node.js
description

Legend

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Full support
Full support
Partial support
Partial support
Has more compatibility info.

See also