<input type="reset"> HTML attribute value

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.

<input> elements of type reset are rendered as buttons, with a default click event handler that resets all inputs in the form to their initial values.

Try it

<form>
  <div class="controls">
    <label for="id">User ID:</label>
    <input type="text" id="id" name="id" />

    <input type="reset" value="Reset" />
    <input type="submit" value="Submit" />
  </div>
</form>

.controls {
  padding-top: 1rem;
  display: grid;
  grid-template-rows: repeat(3, 1fr);
  grid-template-columns: 1fr 2fr;
  gap: 0.7rem;
}

label {
  font-size: 0.8rem;
  justify-self: end;
}

input[type="reset"],
input[type="submit"] {
  width: 5rem;
  justify-self: end;
}

input[type="reset"] {
  grid-column: 2;
  grid-row: 2;
}

input[type="submit"] {
  grid-column: 2;
  grid-row: 3;
}

Note: You should usually avoid including reset buttons in your forms. They're rarely useful, and are instead more likely to frustrate users who click them by mistake (often while trying to click the submit button).

Value

An <input type="reset"> element's value attribute contains a string that is used as the button's label providing the button with an accessible description. Buttons such as reset don't have a value otherwise.

Setting the value attribute

html

Omitting the value attribute

If you don't specify a value, you get a button with the default label (typically "Reset," but this will vary depending on the user agent):

html

Using reset buttons

<input type="reset"> buttons are used to reset forms. If you want to create a custom button and then customize the behavior using JavaScript, you need to use <input type="button">, or better still, a <button> element.

A basic reset button

We'll begin by creating a basic reset button:

html
<form>
  <div>
    <label for="example">Type in some sample text</label>
    <input id="example" type="text" />
  </div>
  <div>
    <input type="reset" value="Reset the form" />
  </div>
</form>

This renders like so:

Try entering some text into the text field, and then pressing the reset button.

Adding a reset keyboard shortcut

To add a keyboard shortcut to a reset button — just as you would with any <input> for which it makes sense — you use the accesskey global attribute.

In this example, r is specified as the access key (you'll need to press r plus the particular modifier keys for your browser/OS combination; see accesskey for a useful list of those).

html
<form>
  <div>
    <label for="example">Type in some sample text</label>
    <input id="example" type="text" />
  </div>
  <div>
    <input type="reset" value="Reset the form" accesskey="r" />
  </div>
</form>

The problem with the above example is that there's no way for the user to know what the access key is! This is especially true since the modifiers are typically non-standard to avoid conflicts. When building a site, be sure to provide this information in a way that doesn't interfere with the site design (for example by providing an easily accessible link that points to information on what the site access keys are). Adding a tooltip to the button (using the title attribute) can also help, although it's not a complete solution for accessibility purposes.

Disabling and enabling a reset button

To disable a reset button, specify the disabled attribute on it, like so:

html

You can enable and disable buttons at run time by setting disabled to true or false; in JavaScript this looks like btn.disabled = true or btn.disabled = false.

Note: See the <input type="button"> page for more ideas about enabling and disabling buttons.

Value	A string used as the button's label
Events	click
Supported common attributes	type and value
IDL attributes	value
DOM interface	HTMLInputElement
Methods	None
Implicit ARIA Role	button