CSS ::placeholder and :placeholder-shown

The :placeholder-shown CSS pseudo-class represents any <input> or <textarea> element that is currently displaying placeholder text.

<input type="text" placeholder="some text" />

input:placeholder-shown {
  font-family: "Baloo 2", cursive;
  font-weight: bold;
  background-color: pink;
}

Output:

In above snippet,

1. If user has not typed anything then placeholder shown background color will be pink
2. When user has typed something then there will be no placeholder shown and the background color will be transparent

📝 NOTE: :placeholder-shown won't work if there will be no placeholder text

🗓 Example:

<input type="text" />

input:placeholder-shown {
  background-color: pink;
}

❌ The above snippet doesn't work

:placeholder-shown vs ::placeholder 🔥

We can use :placeholder-shown to style the input element.

input:placeholder-shown {
  border: 1px solid pink;
  background: yellow;
  color: blue;
}

Here, we set color: blue, but it didn't work. That's because :placeholder-shown will only target the input itself. But for the actual placeholder text, you have to use the pseudo-element ::placeholder.

::placeholder pseudo-element can be used to style the placeholder text in <input> or <textarea> element.

input::placeholder {
  color: blue;
}

Output:

If you wanted to add styles for empty placeholder, we can pass empty string " " as placeholder.

<input type="text" placeholder=" " />

Output:

Now, why don't we combine two selector :not and :placeholder-shown. So we can target if the input is not empty then we can apply css.

<input placeholder="some text" value="Check with empty!" />

input:not(:placeholder-shown) {
  background-color: pink;
}

Output:

In above snippet,

1. If the input has value then the background-color will get applied
2. If the input is empty then background-color not applies

📝 NOTE: ::placeholder does not work with :not selector.

Reference 🧐

• MDN Doc Placeholder
• MDN Doc placeholder-shown
• caniuse - placeholder-shown

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