Remove Safari/Chrome textinput/textarea glow

Edit (11 years later): Don't do this unless you're going to provide a fallback to indicate which element is active. Otherwise, this harms accessibility as it essentially removes the indication showing which element in a document has focus. Imagine being a keyboard user and not really knowing what element you can interact with. Let accessibility trump aesthetics here.

textarea, select, input, button { outline: none; }

Although, it's been argued that keeping the glow/outline is actually beneficial for accessibility as it can help users see which Element is currently focused.

You can also use the pseudo-element ':focus' to only target the inputs when the user has them selected.

Demo: https://jsfiddle.net/JohnnyWalkerDesign/xm3zu0cf/


This effect can occur on non-input elements, too. I've found the following works as a more general solution

:focus {
  outline-color: transparent;
  outline-style: none;
}

Update: You may not have to use the :focus selector. If you have an element, say <div id="mydiv">stuff</div>, and you were getting the outer glow on this div element, just apply like normal:

#mydiv {
  outline-color: transparent;
  outline-style: none;
}

On textarea resizing in webkit based browsers:

Setting max-height and max-width on the textarea will not remove the visual resize handle. Try:

resize: none;

(and yes I agree with "try to avoid doing anything which breaks the user's expectation", but sometimes it does make sense, i.e. in the context of a web application)

To customize the look and feel of webkit form elements from scratch:

-webkit-appearance: none;

I experienced this on a div that had a click event and after 20 some searches I found this snippet that saved my day.

-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0,0,0,0);

This disables the default button highlighting in webkit mobile browsers


Carl W:

This effect can occur on non-input elements, too. I've found the following works as a more general solution

:focus {
  outline-color: transparent;
  outline-style: none;
}

I’ll explain this:

  • :focus means it styles the elements that are in focus. So we are styling the elements in focus.
  • outline-color: transparent; means that the blue glow is transparent.
  • outline-style: none; does the same thing.