Selecting the full text with just one click in CSS

DanielDecember 3, 2021December 2, 2021

In CSS we can use the user-select property to decide how the user can select the text.

By default, a user has to drag and hold the cursor to select the wateded text. But thanks to the user-select prop we can select a full text with just one click:

.select-all-text {
    user-select: all;
    -moz-user-select: all;
    -webkit-user-select: all;
}

And you can apply the .select-all-text class the whatever element is needed. A paragrpah, a div and so on.

But you can also have a no-select option if you don't want to allow any selection, or copy paste at all.

.no-select-allowed {
    user-select: none;
    -moz-user-select: none;
    -webkit-user-select: none;
}

Below is a full Codepen example with these options in action.

See the Pen
CSS User Select by JS Craft (@js-craft)
on CodePen.

PS: if you want to reved to the default way of selecting the text you can say:

.default-select {
    user-select: auto;
    -moz-user-select: auto;
    -webkit-user-select: auto;
}