Web/HTML/Element/option

The HTML <option> element 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.

The source for this interactive example is stored in a GitHub repository. If you'd like to contribute to the interactive examples project, please clone https://github.com/mdn/interactive-examples and send us a pull request.

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.
Implicit ARIA role	`option`
Permitted ARIA roles	No `role` permitted
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 StandardThe definition of '<option>' in that specification.	Living Standard
HTML5The definition of '<option>' in that specification.	Recommendation
HTML 4.01 SpecificationThe definition of '<option>' in that specification.	Recommendation	Initial definition

Browser compatibility

Update compatibility data on GitHub

	Desktop						Mobile
	Chrome	Edge	Firefox	Internet Explorer	Opera	Safari	Android webview	Chrome for Android	Firefox for Android	Opera for Android	Safari on iOS	Samsung Internet
`option`	Chrome Full support 1	Edge Full support 12	Firefox Full support 1	IE Full support Yes	Opera Full support Yes	Safari Full support Yes	WebView Android Full support Yes	Chrome Android Full support Yes	Firefox Android Full support 4	Opera Android Full support Yes	Safari iOS Full support Yes	Samsung Internet Android Full support Yes
`disabled`	Chrome Full support 1	Edge Full support 12	Firefox Full support 1	IE Full support Yes	Opera Full support Yes	Safari Full support Yes	WebView Android Full support Yes	Chrome Android Full support Yes	Firefox Android Full support 4	Opera Android Full support Yes	Safari iOS Full support Yes	Samsung Internet Android Full support Yes
`label`	Chrome Full support 1	Edge Full support 12	Firefox Full support 1 Notes' Full support 1 Notes' Notes' Before 77, Firefox didn't display the value of the `label` attribute as option text if element's content was empty. See bug 40545. Notes' 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), they will not bubble up 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. Notes' 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).	IE Full support Yes	Opera Full support Yes	Safari Full support Yes	WebView Android Full support Yes	Chrome Android Full support Yes	Firefox Android Full support 4 Notes' Full support 4 Notes' Notes' Before 77, Firefox didn't display the value of the `label` attribute as option text if element's content was empty. See bug 40545.	Opera Android Full support Yes	Safari iOS Full support Yes	Samsung Internet Android Full support Yes
`selected`	Chrome Full support 1	Edge Full support 12	Firefox Full support 1	IE Full support Yes	Opera Full support Yes	Safari Full support Yes	WebView Android Full support Yes	Chrome Android Full support Yes	Firefox Android Full support 4	Opera Android Full support Yes	Safari iOS Full support Yes	Samsung Internet Android Full support Yes
`value`	Chrome Full support 1	Edge Full support 12	Firefox Full support 1	IE Full support Yes	Opera Full support Yes	Safari Full support Yes	WebView Android Full support Yes	Chrome Android Full support Yes	Firefox Android Full support 4	Opera Android Full support Yes	Safari iOS Full support Yes	Samsung Internet Android Full support Yes

Legend

Full support: Full support
See implementation notes.': See implementation notes.