HTMLTextAreaElement: defaultValue property

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

The defaultValue property of the HTMLTextAreaElement interface represents the default text content of this text area. Getting and setting this value is equivalent to getting and setting textContent on the <textarea>.

Value

A string.

Examples

In the example below, the defaultValue still returns the value originally written in the HTML. If a default value is set, either via HTML or the defaultValue property, user input will update the value but will not overwrite the defaultValue.

js
const textareaElement = document.getElementById("comment");
console.log(textArea.defaultValue);
textArea.defaultValue = "This is the default text now!";