Anyway to prevent the Blue highlighting of elements in Chrome when clicking quickly?

Most of the time I'm not worried about it but I have an image carousel and if I click on the next and previous divs quickly, they will be highlighted in Chrome.

I tried using outline:none but no effect. Are there any solutions out there?

Solution 1:

For Chrome on Android, you can use the -webkit-tap-highlight-color CSS property:

-webkit-tap-highlight-color is a non-standard CSS property that sets the color of the highlight that appears over a link while it's being tapped. The highlighting indicates to the user that their tap is being successfully recognized, and indicates which element they're tapping on.

To remove the highlighting completely, you can set the value to transparent:

-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;

Be aware that this might have consequences on accessibility: see outlinenone.com

Solution 2:

You can use pure CSS to accomplish this. Here's a rundown for multi-browser support, chrome being covered by the first line and the final :focus bit. Details below.

.noSelect {
    -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent;
    -webkit-touch-callout: none;
    -webkit-user-select: none;
    -khtml-user-select: none;
    -moz-user-select: none;
    -ms-user-select: none;
    user-select: none;
}
.noSelect:focus {
    outline: none !important;
}

Simply add the class="noSelect" attribute to the element you wish to apply this class to. I would highly recommend giving this CSS solution a try. Some have suggested using JavaScript, but I believe this is the cleanest solution.

For Android/Safari mobile/Edge

-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; is the additional rule you may be looking for. Affects Chrome desktop (esp. with touchscreen) and mobile devices. Here's a warning about using this non-standard property, as well as some accessibility concerns with suggestions. Best practice is to replace the highlight with your own styling.

UPDATE: Later versions of Chrome...

A commenter on this answer pointed out :focus { outline: none !important;} is needed for newer versions of Chrome. Answer adapted to include this, as well! Ah, ever-changing standards.