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<option>

The <option> is used to define an item contained in a <select>, an <optgroup>, or a <datalist> element. As such, <option> can represent menu items in popups and other lists of items in an HTML document.

Content categories	None.
Permitted content	Text, possibly with escaped characters (like `é`).
Tag omission	The start tag is mandatory. The end tag is optional if this element is immediately followed by another `<option>` element or an `<optgroup>`, or if the parent element has no more content.
Permitted parents	A `<select>`, an `<optgroup>` or a `<datalist>` element.
Permitted ARIA roles	None
DOM interface	`HTMLOptionElement`

Attributes

This element includes the global attributes.

disabled: If this Boolean attribute is set, this option is not checkable. Often browsers grey out such control and it won't receive any browsing event, like mouse clicks or focus-related ones. If this attribute is not set, the element can still be disabled if one of its ancestors is a disabled <optgroup> element.
label: This attribute is text for the label indicating the meaning of the option. If the label attribute isn't defined, its value is that of the element text content.
selected: If present, this Boolean attribute indicates that the option is initially selected. If the <option> element is the descendant of a <select> element whose multiple attribute is not set, only one single <option> of this <select> element may have the selected attribute.
value: The content of this attribute represents the value to be submitted with the form, should this option be selected. If this attribute is omitted, the value is taken from the text content of the option element.

Examples

See <select> for examples.

Specifications

Specification	Status	Comment
HTML Living Standard The definition of '<option>' in that specification.	Living Standard
HTML5 The definition of '<option>' in that specification.	Recommendation
HTML 4.01 Specification The definition of '<option>' in that specification.	Recommendation	Initial definition

Browser compatibility

Feature	Chrome	Edge	Firefox	Internet Explorer	Opera	Safari
Basic support	1	Yes	1	Yes	Yes	Yes
`disabled`	1	Yes	1	Yes	Yes	Yes
`label`	1	Yes	1¹ ² ³	Yes	Yes	Yes
`selected`	1	Yes	1	Yes	Yes	Yes
`value`	1	Yes	1	Yes	Yes	Yes

Feature	Android webview	Chrome for Android	Edge mobile	Firefox for Android	IE mobile	Opera Android	iOS Safari
Basic support	Yes	Yes	Yes	4	Yes	Yes	Yes
`disabled`	Yes	Yes	Yes	4	Yes	Yes	Yes
`label`	Yes	Yes	Yes	4¹	Yes	Yes	Yes
`selected`	Yes	Yes	Yes	4	Yes	Yes	Yes
`value`	Yes	Yes	Yes	4	Yes	Yes	Yes

1. Firefox doesn't display the value of the label attribute as option text if element's content is empty. See bug 40545.

2. Historically, Firefox has allowed keyboard and mouse events to bubble up from the <option> element to the parent <select> element, although this behavior is inconsistent across many browsers. For better Web compatibility (and for technical reasons), when Firefox is in multi-process mode and the <select> element is displayed as a drop-down list. The behavior is unchanged if the <select> is presented inline and it has either the multiple attribute defined or a size attribute set to more than 1. Rather than watching <option> elements for events, you should watch for change events on <select>. See bug 1090602 for details.

3. When Mozilla introduced dedicated content threads to Firefox (through the Electrolysis, or e10s, project), support for styling <option> elements was removed temporarily. Starting in Firefox 54, you can apply foreground and background colors to <option> elements again, using the color and background-color CSS properties. See bug 910022 for more information. Note that this is still disabled in Linux due to lack of contrast (see bug 1338283 for progress on this).

<option>

Attributes

Examples

Specifications

Browser compatibility

See also