::placeholder

The ::placeholder pseudo element (or a pseudo classin some casesdepending on the browser implementation) allows you to the placeholder text of a form element. As inthe text set with the placeholder attribute:

<input type="email" placeholder="[email protected]">

You can that text across most browsers with this smattering of vendor-prefixed selectors:

::-webkit-input-placeholder { /* Chrome/Opera/Safari */
  color: pink;
}
::-moz-placeholder { /* Firefox 19+ */
  color: pink;
}
:-ms-input-placeholder { /* IE 10+ */
  color: pink;
}
:-moz-placeholder { /* Firefox 18- */
  color: pink;
}

Important warning: this syntax is non-standardthus all the naming craziness. It doesn’t appear in the spec at all. :placeholder-shown is standardand even spec authors seem to think ::placeholder will be the standardized version.

Like any psuedoyou can scope it to specific elements as neededlike:

input[type="email"].big-dog::-webkit-input-placeholder {
  color: orange;
}

Demo

The difference between :placeholder-shown and ::placeholder

:placeholder-shown is for selecting the input itself when it’s placeholder text is being shown. As opposed to ::placeholder which s the placeholder text.

Here’s a diagram:

I found this highly confusing as:

1. the specs only have :placeholder-shown and not ::placeholder
2. :placeholder-shown can still affect the styling of the placeholder textsince it’s a parent element (e.g. font-size).

Note that :placeholder-shown is a pseudo class (it’s an element in a particular state) and ::placeholder is a pseudo element (a visible thing that isn’t really in the DOM). Distinguishable by single-versus-double colons.

Tab Atkins cleared it up for me via email:

:placeholder-shownbeing a pseudo-classhas to select an existing element – it selects the input whenever you’re in the placeholder-showing state. The ::placeholder pseudo-element wraps the actual placeholder text.

Element or class?

This functionality is not standardized. That means that every browser has a different idea on how it should work.

Firefox originally implemented this as a pseudo classbut changed it for a bunch of reasons. To make a long story shortyou can’t do as much with a pseudo class.

For instanceif you want to change the color of the text when the input is focused. You would use a selector like input:focus::placeholderwhich you wouldn’t be able to do with a pseudo class (they don’t stack the same way).

IE10 supports this as a pseudo classrather than an element. Everyone else has implemented a pseudo element.

Firefox placeholder color

You might notice how in Firefox the color of the placeholder looks faded when compared to other browsers. In the image belowFirefox 43 is shown on the left whilst Chrome 47 is shown on the right:

This is becauseby defaultall placeholders in Firefox have an opacity value applied to themso in order to fix this we need to reset that value:

::-moz-placeholder {
  opacity: 1;
}

You can see more by testing this demo out in Firefox.

Supported Styles

The pseudo element supports styling of these properties:

• font properties
• color
• background properties
• word-spacing
• letter-spacing
• text-decoration
• vertical-align
• text-transform
• line-height
• text-indent
• opacity

The pseudo class supports most (if not all) of these properties as wellbut isn’t as flexible for the reasons outlined above.

Browser support

Other resources

• MDN Docs
• “The CSS3 Placeholder Pseudo-element” by Guil Hernandez
• “Styling HTML placeholder attribute” by Mounir Lamouri
• “Styling Placeholders” by Tab Atkins

Related properties