::selection – Change text selection color

Michael Gearon

Last updated on July 7, 2021

The CSS pseudo-element ::selection changes the styling that is highlighted by the user, such as when you highlight text using a mouse or another pointing device. There is a limited amount of properties that can be used with this pseudo-element which are:

• color
• background-color
• text-shadow

It’s also worth noting that instead of using background-color you can use the background property but if you try and use a background image it will not work and be ignored. The browser support is good for this property (84.75%) being supported in all browsers apart from Safari on iOS with no prefix. If you are supporting Firefox version 61 or less then you will need to use the -moz- prefix.Also there is a bug in Safari for Mac where if you are using the CSS multi-coloumn module the property will not work.

Example

In the below example we’re saying that if the user highlights something then it should be a purple background and the text should be orange:

::selection {
  background-color: purple;
  color: orange;
}

Demo of different selections

See the Pen
by Michael Gearon (@michaelgearon)
on CodePen.light

More CSS Guides

• line-clamp CSS guide
• CSS Text Transform
• border-radius CSS property

First published on August 24, 2020