Error: message

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 message data property of an Error instance is a human-readable description of the error.

Value

A string corresponding to the value passed to the Error() constructor as the first argument.

Property attributes of Error: message

Writable	yes
Enumerable	no
Configurable	yes

This property contains a brief description of the error if one is available or has been set. The message property combined with the name property is used by the Error.prototype.toString() method to create a string representation of the Error.

By default, the message property is an empty string, but this behavior can be overridden for an instance by specifying a message as the first argument to the Error constructor.

Examples

Throwing a custom error

js
const e = new Error("Could not parse input");
// e.message is 'Could not parse input'
throw e;

Specifications

Specification

ECMAScript® 2027 Language Specification
# sec-error.prototype.message

Browser compatibility

Enable JavaScript to view this browser compatibility table.

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Standard built-in objects
Error
Constructor
1. Error()
Static methods
1. captureStackTrace()
2. isError()
Static properties
1. stackTraceLimit
Instance methods
1. toString()
Instance properties
1. cause
2. columnNumber
3. fileName
4. lineNumber
5. message
6. name
7. stack
Inheritance
Object/Function
Static methods
1. apply()
2. bind()
3. call()
4. toString()
5. [Symbol.hasInstance]()
Static properties
1. displayName
2. length
3. name
4. prototype
5. arguments
6. caller
Instance methods
1. __defineGetter__()
2. __defineSetter__()
3. __lookupGetter__()
4. __lookupSetter__()
5. hasOwnProperty()
6. isPrototypeOf()
7. propertyIsEnumerable()
8. toLocaleString()
9. toString()
10. valueOf()
Instance properties
1. __proto__
2. constructor
Related pages
AggregateError
EvalError
InternalError
RangeError
ReferenceError
SyntaxError
TypeError
URIError