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<input type="range">

<input> elements of type "range" let the user specify a numeric value which must be no less than a given value, and no more than another given value. The precise value, however, is not considered important. This is typically represented using a slider or dial control rather than a text entry box like the "number" input type. Because this kind of widget is imprecise, it shouldn't typically be used unless the control's exact value isn't important.

If the user's browser doesn't support type "range", it will fall back and treat it as a "text" input.

Value A DOMString containing the string representation of the selected numeric value; use valueAsNumber to get the value as a Number.
Events change and input
Supported Common Attributes autocomplete, list, max, min, and step
IDL attributes list, value, and valueAsNumber
Methods stepDown() and stepUp()

Value

The value attribute contains a DOMString which contains a string representation of the selected number. The value is never an empty string (""). The default value is halfway between the specified minimum and maximum—unless the maximum is actually less than the minimum, in which case the default is set to the value of the min attribute. The algorithm for determining the default value is:

defaultValue = (rangeElem.max < rangeElem.min) ? rangeElem.min
               : rangeElem.min + (rangeElem.max - rangeElem.min)/2;

If an attempt is made to set the value lower than the minimum, it is set to the minimum. Similarly, an attempt to set the value higher than the maximum results in it being set to the maximum.

Additional attributes

In addition to the attributes shared by all <input> elements, range inputs offer the following attributes:

Attribute Description
max The maximum permitted value
min The minimum permitted value
step The stepping interval, used both for user interface and validation purposes

max

The greatest value in the range of permitted values. If the value entered into the element exceeds this, the element fails constraint validation. If the value of the max attribute isn't a number, then the element has no maximum value.

This value must be greater than or equal to the value of the min attribute.

min

The lowest value in the range of permitted values. If the value of the element is less than this, the element fails constraint validation. If a value is specified for min that isn't a valid number, the input has no minimum value.

This value must be less than or equal to the value of the max attribute.

step

The step attribute is a number that specifies the granularity that the value must adhere to, or the special value "any", which is described below. Only values which are equal to the basis for stepping (min if specified, value otherwise, and an appropriate default value if neither of those is provided) are valid.

A string value of "any" means that no stepping is implied, and any value is allowed (barring other constraints, such as min and max).

Note: When the data entered by the user doesn't adhere to the stepping configuration, the user agent may round to the nearest valid value, preferring numbers in the positive direction when there are two equally close options.

The default stepping value for number inputs is 1, allowing only integers to be entered, unless the stepping base is not an integer; for example, if you set min to -10 and value to 1.5, then a step of 1 will allow only values such as 1.5, 2.5, 3.5,... in the positive direction and -0.5, -1.5, -2.5,... in the negative direction.

Using range inputs

While the "number" type lets users enter a number with optional constraints forcing their value to be between a minimum and a maximum value, it does require that they enter a specific value. The "range" input type lets you ask the user for a value in cases where the user may not even care—or know—what the specific numeric value selected is.

A few examples of situations in which range inputs are commonly used:

  • Audio controls such as volume and balance, or filter controls.
  • Color configuration controls such as color channels, transparency, brightness, etc.
  • Game configuration controls such as difficulty, visibility distance, world size, and so forth.
  • Password length for a password manager's generated passwords.

As a rule, if the user is more likely to be interested in the percentage of the distance between minimum and maximum values than the actual number itself, a range input is a great candidate. For example, in the case of a home stereo volume control, users typically think "set volume at halfway to maximum" instead of "set volume to 0.5".

Specifying the minimum and maximum

By default, the minimum is 0 and the maximum is 100. If that's not what you want, you can easily specify different bounds by changing the values of the min and/or max attributes. These can be any floating-point value.

For example, to ask the user for a value between -10 and 10, you can use:

<input type="range" min="-10" max="10">

Setting the value's granularity

By default, the granularity, is 1, meaning that the value is always an integer. You can change the step attribute to control the granularity. For example, If you need a value between 5 and 10, accurate to two decimal places, you should set the value of step to 0.01:

<input type="range" min="5" max="10" step="0.01">

If you want to accept any value regardless of how many decimal places it extends to, you can specify a value of "any" for the step attribute:

<input type="range" min="0" max="3.14" step="any">

This example lets the user select any value between 0 and π without any restriction on the fractional part of the value selected.

Adding hash marks and labels

The HTML specification gives browsers some flexibility on how to present the range control. Nowhere is this flexibility more apparent than in the area of hash marks and, to a lesser degree, labels. The specification describes how to add custom points to the range control using the list attribute and a <datalist> element, but does not have any requirements or even recommendations for standardized hash or tick marks along the length of the control.

Range control mockups

Since browsers have this flexibility, and to date none support all of the features HTML defines for range controls, here are some mockups to show you what you might get on macOS in a browser which supports them.

An unadorned range control

This is what you get if you don't specify a list attribute, or if the browser doesn't support it.

HTML Screenshot
<input type="range">
Screenshot of a plain slider control on macOS
A range control with hash marks

This range control is using a list attribute specifying the ID of a <datalist> which defines a series of hash marks on the control. There are eleven of them, so that there's one at 0% as well as at each 10% mark. Each point is represented using an <option> element with its value set to the range's value at which a mark should be drawn.

HTML Screenshot
<input type="range" list="tickmarks">

<datalist id="tickmarks">
  <option value="0">
  <option value="10">
  <option value="20">
  <option value="30">
  <option value="40">
  <option value="50">
  <option value="60">
  <option value="70">
  <option value="80">
  <option value="90">
  <option value="100">
</datalist>
Screenshot of a plain slider control on macOS
A range control with hash marks and labels

You can add labels to your range control by adding the label attribute to the <option> elements corresponding to the tick marks you wish to have labels for.

HTML Screenshot
<input type="range" list="tickmarks">

<datalist id="tickmarks">
  <option value="0" label="0%">
  <option value="10">
  <option value="20">
  <option value="30">
  <option value="40">
  <option value="50" label="50%">
  <option value="60">
  <option value="70">
  <option value="80">
  <option value="90">
  <option value="100" label="100%">
</datalist>
Screenshot of a plain slider control on macOS

Note: Currently, no browser fully supports these features. Firefox doesn't support hash marks and labels at all, for example, while Chrome supports hash marks but doesn't support labels. Version 66 (66.0.3359.181) of Chrome supports labels but the <datalist> tag has to be styled with CSS as its display property is set to none by default, hiding the labels.

Change the orientation

The HTML specification recommends that browsers automatically switch to drawing range controls vertically if the specified width is less than the height. Unfortunately, no major browsers currently support vertical range controls directly. You can, however, create a vertical range control by drawing a horizontal range control on its side. The easiest way is to use CSS: by applying a transform to rotate the element, you can make it vertical. Let's take a look.

HTML

The HTML needs to be updated to wrap the <input> in a <div> to let us correct the layout after the transform is performed (since transforms don't automatically affect the layout of the page):

<div class="slider-wrapper">
  <input type="range" min="0" max="11" value="7" step="1">
</div>

CSS

Now we need some CSS. First is the CSS for the wrapper itself; this specifies the display mode and size we want so that the page lays out correctly; in essence, it's reserving an area of the page for the slider so that the rotated slider fits into the reserved space without making a mess of things.

.slider-wrapper {
  display: inline-block;
  width: 20px;
  height: 150px;
  padding: 0;
}
Then comes the style information for the <input> element within the reserved space:
.slider-wrapper input {
  width: 150px;
  height: 20px;
  margin: 0;
  transform-origin: 75px 75px;
  transform: rotate(-90deg);
}

The size of the control is set to be 150 pixels long by 20 pixels tall. The margins are set to 0 and the transform-origin is shifted to the middle of the space the slider rotates through; since the slider is configured to be 150 pixels wide, it rotates through a box which is 150 pixels on each side. Offsetting the origin by 75px on each axis means we will rotate around the center of that space. Finally, we rotate counter-clockwise by 90°. The result: a range input which is rotated so the maximum value is at the top and the minimum value is at the bottom.

Result

Screenshot Live sample

Validation

There is no pattern validation available; however, the following forms of automatic validation are performed:

  • If the value is set to something which can't be converted into a valid floating-point number, validation fails because the input is suffering from a bad input.
  • The value won't be less than min. The default is 0.
  • The value won't be greater than max. The default is 100.
  • The value will be a multiple of step. The default is 1.

Examples

In addition to the assorted examples above, you'll find range inputs demonstrated in these articles:

Specifications

Browser compatibilityUpdate compatibility data on GitHub

Desktop
Chrome Edge Firefox Internet Explorer Opera Safari
Basic support 4 12 23 10 11 3.1
Tick mark support Yes ? No
No
See bug 841942.
? Yes No
Vertically-oriented slider support Yes
Yes
The slider can be oriented vertically by setting the non-standard -webkit-appearance: slider-vertical style on the input element. You shouldn't use this, since it's proprietary, unless you include appropriate fallbacks for users of other browsers.
? No
No
See bug 840820 and bug 981916.
10
10
The slider can be oriented vertically by setting the writing-mode: bt-lr style on the input element.
Yes
Yes
The slider can be oriented vertically by setting the non-standard -webkit-appearance: slider-vertical style on the input element. You shouldn't use this, since it's proprietary, unless you include appropriate fallbacks for users of other browsers.
Yes
Yes
The slider can be oriented vertically by setting the non-standard -webkit-appearance: slider-vertical style on the input element. You shouldn't use this, since it's proprietary, unless you include appropriate fallbacks for users of other browsers.
Mobile
Android webview Chrome for Android Edge Mobile Firefox for Android Opera for Android iOS Safari Samsung Internet
Basic support 4.4
4.4
2 — 4.4
Android WebView recognizes the range type, but doesn't implement a range-specific control.
57 ? 52 Yes 5.1 ?
Tick mark support Yes Yes ? No
No
See bug 841942.
Yes No ?
Vertically-oriented slider support Yes
Yes
The slider can be oriented vertically by setting the non-standard -webkit-appearance: slider-vertical style on the input element. You shouldn't use this, since it's proprietary, unless you include appropriate fallbacks for users of other browsers.
Yes
Yes
The slider can be oriented vertically by setting the non-standard -webkit-appearance: slider-vertical style on the input element. You shouldn't use this, since it's proprietary, unless you include appropriate fallbacks for users of other browsers.
? No
No
See bug 840820 and bug 981916.
Yes
Yes
The slider can be oriented vertically by setting the non-standard -webkit-appearance: slider-vertical style on the input element. You shouldn't use this, since it's proprietary, unless you include appropriate fallbacks for users of other browsers.
Yes
Yes
The slider can be oriented vertically by setting the non-standard -webkit-appearance: slider-vertical style on the input element. You shouldn't use this, since it's proprietary, unless you include appropriate fallbacks for users of other browsers.
?

See also

© 2005–2018 Mozilla Developer Network and individual contributors.
Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License v2.5 or later.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/input/range