Creating a textarea with auto-resize

Solution 1:

A COMPLETE YET SIMPLE SOLUTION

Updated 2020-05-14 (Improved browser support for mobiles and tablets)

The following code will work:

• On key input.
• With pasted text (right click & ctrl+v).
• With cut text (right click & ctrl+x).
• With pre-loaded text.
• With all textarea's (multiline textbox's) site wide.
• With Firefox (v31-67 tested).
• With Chrome (v37-74 tested).
• With IE (v9-v11 tested).
• With Edge (v14-v18 tested).
• With IOS Safari.
• With Android Browser.
• With JavaScript strict mode.
• Is w3c validated.
• And is streamlined and efficient.

OPTION 1 (With jQuery)

This option requires jQuery and has been tested and is working with 1.7.2 - 3.6

Simple (Add this jquery code to your master script file and forget about it.)

$("textarea").each(function () {
  this.setAttribute("style", "height:" + (this.scrollHeight) + "px;overflow-y:hidden;");
}).on("input", function () {
  this.style.height = "auto";
  this.style.height = (this.scrollHeight) + "px";
});

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.3.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<textarea placeholder="Type, paste, cut text here...">PRELOADED TEXT.
This javascript should now add better support for IOS browsers and Android browsers.</textarea>
<textarea placeholder="Type, paste, cut text here..."></textarea>

Test on jsfiddle

OPTION 2 (Pure JavaScript)

Simple (Add this JavaScript to your master script file and forget about it.)

const tx = document.getElementsByTagName("textarea");
for (let i = 0; i < tx.length; i++) {
  tx[i].setAttribute("style", "height:" + (tx[i].scrollHeight) + "px;overflow-y:hidden;");
  tx[i].addEventListener("input", OnInput, false);
}

function OnInput() {
  this.style.height = "auto";
  this.style.height = (this.scrollHeight) + "px";
}

<textarea placeholder="Type, paste, cut text here...">PRELOADED TEXT. This JavaScript should now add better support for IOS browsers and Android browsers.</textarea>
<textarea placeholder="Type, paste, cut text here..."></textarea>

Test on jsfiddle

OPTION 3 (jQuery Extension)

Useful if you want to apply further chaining to the textareas you want to be auto-sized.

jQuery.fn.extend({
  autoHeight: function () {
    function autoHeight_(element) {
      return jQuery(element)
        .css({ "height": "auto", "overflow-y": "hidden" })
        .height(element.scrollHeight);
    }
    return this.each(function() {
      autoHeight_(this).on("input", function() {
        autoHeight_(this);
      });
    });
  }
});

Invoke with $("textarea").autoHeight()

UPDATING TEXTAREA VIA JAVASCRIPT

When injecting content into a textarea via JavaScript append the following code to invoke the function in option 1.

$("textarea").trigger("input");

PRESET TEXTAREA HEIGHT

To fix the initial height of the textarea you will need to add an additional condition:

const txHeight = 16;
const tx = document.getElementsByTagName("textarea");

for (let i = 0; i < tx.length; i++) {
  if (tx[i].value == '') {
    tx[i].setAttribute("style", "height:" + txHeight + "px;overflow-y:hidden;");
  } else {
    tx[i].setAttribute("style", "height:" + (tx[i].scrollHeight) + "px;overflow-y:hidden;");
  }
  tx[i].addEventListener("input", OnInput, false);
}

function OnInput(e) {
  this.style.height = "auto";
  this.style.height = (this.scrollHeight) + "px";
}

<textarea placeholder="Type, paste, cut text here...">PRELOADED TEXT. This JavaScript should now add better support for IOS browsers and Android browsers.</textarea>
<textarea placeholder="Type, paste, cut text here..."></textarea>

Solution 2:

This works for me (Firefox 3.6/4.0 and Chrome 10/11):

var observe;
if (window.attachEvent) {
    observe = function (element, event, handler) {
        element.attachEvent('on'+event, handler);
    };
}
else {
    observe = function (element, event, handler) {
        element.addEventListener(event, handler, false);
    };
}
function init () {
    var text = document.getElementById('text');
    function resize () {
        text.style.height = 'auto';
        text.style.height = text.scrollHeight+'px';
    }
    /* 0-timeout to get the already changed text */
    function delayedResize () {
        window.setTimeout(resize, 0);
    }
    observe(text, 'change',  resize);
    observe(text, 'cut',     delayedResize);
    observe(text, 'paste',   delayedResize);
    observe(text, 'drop',    delayedResize);
    observe(text, 'keydown', delayedResize);

    text.focus();
    text.select();
    resize();
}

textarea {
    border: 0 none white;
    overflow: hidden;
    padding: 0;
    outline: none;
    background-color: #D0D0D0;
}

<body onload="init();">
<textarea rows="1" style="height:1em;" id="text"></textarea>
</body>

If you want try it on jsfiddle It starts with a single line and grows only the exact amount necessary. It is ok for a single textarea, but I wanted to write something where I would have many many many such textareas (about as much as one would normally have lines in a large text document). In that case it is really slow. (In Firefox it's insanely slow.) So I really would like an approach that uses pure CSS. This would be possible with contenteditable, but I want it to be plaintext-only.

Solution 3:

jQuery solution adjust the css to match your requirements

css...

div#container textarea {
    min-width: 270px;
    width: 270px;
    height: 22px;
    line-height: 24px;
    min-height: 22px;
    overflow-y: hidden; /* fixes scrollbar flash - kudos to @brettjonesdev */
    padding-top: 1.1em; /* fixes text jump on Enter keypress */
}

javascript...

// auto adjust the height of
$('#container').delegate( 'textarea', 'keydown', function (){
    $(this).height( 0 );
    $(this).height( this.scrollHeight );
});
$('#container').find( 'textarea' ).keydown();

OR alternative for jQuery 1.7+...

// auto adjust the height of
$('#container').on( 'keyup', 'textarea', function (){
    $(this).height( 0 );
    $(this).height( this.scrollHeight );
});
$('#container').find( 'textarea' ).keyup();

I've created a fiddle with the absolute minimum styling as a starting point for your experiments... http://jsfiddle.net/53eAy/951/

Solution 4:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <title>Textarea autoresize</title>
    <style>
    textarea {
        overflow: hidden;
    }
    </style>
    <script>
    function resizeTextarea(ev) {
        this.style.height = '24px';
        this.style.height = this.scrollHeight + 12 + 'px';
    }

    var te = document.querySelector('textarea');
    te.addEventListener('input', resizeTextarea);
    </script>
</head>
<body>
    <textarea></textarea>
</body>
</html>

Tested in Firefox 14 and Chromium 18. The numbers 24 and 12 are arbitrary, test to see what suits you best.

You could do without the style and script tags, but it becomes a bit messy imho (this is old style HTML+JS and is not encouraged).

<textarea style="overflow: hidden" onkeyup="this.style.height='24px'; this.style.height = this.scrollHeight + 12 + 'px';"></textarea>

Edit: modernized code. Changed onkeyup attribute to addEventListener.
Edit: keydown works better than keyup
Edit: declare function before using
Edit: input works better than keydown (thnx @WASD42 & @MA-Maddin)

jsfiddle

Solution 5:

The best solution (works and is short) for me is:

    $(document).on('input', 'textarea', function () {
        $(this).outerHeight(38).outerHeight(this.scrollHeight); // 38 or '1em' -min-height
    }); 

It works like a charm without any blinking with paste (with mouse also), cut, entering and it shrinks to the right size.

Please take a look at jsFiddle.