How to remove focus around buttons on click

Question

My buttons all have a highlight around them after I click them. This is in Chrome.

<button class="btn btn-primary btn-block">
    <span class="icon-plus"></span> Add Page
</button>

I am using Bootstrap with a theme, but I'm pretty sure that's not it: I was noticing this before on another project.

It goes away if I use an <a> tag instead of <button>. Why? If I wanted to use <button> how would I make it go away?

Answer 1

You want something like:

<button class="btn btn-primary btn-block" onclick="this.blur();">...

The .blur() method correctly removes the focus highlighting and doesn't mess up Bootstraps's styles.

Answer 2

my understanding is that the focus is first applied following the onMouseDown event, so calling e.preventDefault() in onMouseDown may be a clean solution depending on your needs. This is certainly an accessibility friendly solution, but obviously it adjusts the behaviour of mouse clicks which may not be compatible with your web project.

I am currently using this solution (within a react-bootstrap project) and I do not receive a focus flicker or retained focus of buttons after a click, but I am still able to tab my focus and visually visualize the focus of the same buttons.

Answer 3

2021 focus-visible Solution

Note 1: In each of the 3 options outlined below, buttons behave the same way (no focus ring on click), but selects and inputs vary slightly in their default behavior. Only Option 3 removes focus rings consistently around buttons, inputs, and selects. Please compare all approaches and make sure you understand the implications.

Note 2: Due to the cascading nature of CSS, the order of the CSS rules is important.

Note 3: There are still some accessibility concerns with any focus-visible approach. Namely, that until browsers expose a configuration to let users choose when to show visible focus rings, focus-visible should be considered worse for accessibility than using focus rings everywhere all the time, but better than the harmful :focus {outline:none} approach mentioned in other answers to this question. See "A note about accessibility" section at the bottom of this answer for more details.

OPTION 1: Use the :focus-visible pseudo-class

The :focus-visible pseudo-class can be used to remove outlines and focus rings on buttons and various elements for users that are NOT navigating via keyboard (i.e., via touch or mouse click).

Warning: As of 2021, the :focus-visible pseudo-class is ** widely supported across modern browsers but fails on fringe browsers**. If old-browser support is important, the Javascript polyfill in option 2 below is the closest approximation.

/**
 * Remove focus styles for non-keyboard focus.
 */
:focus:not(:focus-visible) {
  outline: 0;
  box-shadow: none;
}

/**
 * Cross-browser styles for explicit focus via 
 * keyboard-based (eg Tab) navigation or the
 * .focus-visible utility class.
 */
:focus,
.focus-visible:focus:not(:focus-visible) {
  outline: 0;
  box-shadow:
    0 0 0 .2rem #fff,
    0 0 0 .35rem #069;
}

<h3>Defaults:</h3>
<button>Foo</button>
<input type="button" value="Bar"/> 
<select><option>Baz</option></select>
<input type="text" placeholder="Qux"/>
<textarea placeholder="Quux" rows="1"></textarea>

<h3>Force focus on click:</h3>
<button class="focus-visible">Foo</button>
<input class="focus-visible" type="button" value="Bar"/> 
<select class="focus-visible"><option>Baz</option></select>
<input class="focus-visible" type="text" placeholder="Qux"/>
<textarea class="focus-visible" placeholder="Quux" rows="1">
</textarea>

OPTION 2: Use a .focus-visible polyfill

This solution uses a normal CSS class instead of the pseudo-class mentioned above and has wider browser support (in 2021). It requires either 1 or 2 Javascripts be added to your HTML; one for the official focus-visible polyfill and the other for older browsers that don't support classList.

Note: In Chrome, the polyfill seems to treat selects differently than the native :focus-visible pseudo-class.

/**
 * Cross-browser focus ring for explicit focus 
 * via keyboard-based (eg Tab) navigation or the
 * .focus-visible utility class.
 */
:focus {
  outline: 0;
  box-shadow:
    0 0 0 .2rem #fff,
    0 0 0 .35rem #069;
}

/**
 * Remove focus ring for non-explicit scenarios.
 */
:focus:not(.focus-visible) {
  outline: 0;
  box-shadow: none;
}

<h3>Defaults:</h3>
<button>Foo</button>
<input type="button" value="Bar"/> 
<select><option>Baz</option></select>
<input type="text" placeholder="Qux"/>
<textarea placeholder="Quux" rows="1"></textarea>

<h3>Force focus on click:</h3>
<button class="focus-visible">Foo</button>
<input class="focus-visible" type="button" value="Bar"/> 
<select class="focus-visible"><option>Baz</option></select>
<input class="focus-visible" type="text" placeholder="Qux"/>
<textarea class="focus-visible" placeholder="Quux" rows="1">
</textarea>

<!-- place this code just before the closing </html> tag -->
<script src="https://cdn.polyfill.io/v2/polyfill.js? 
features=Element.prototype.classList"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/focus-visible"></script>

OPTION 3: Use a global key-navigation vs mouse-navigation state

An inverse solution to focus-visible, is to disable outlines on mousemove, and enable them on keydown -> "Tab". In this case, rather than specifying which elements shouldn't show an outline, you must specify which elements should.

document.addEventListener("mousemove", () => 
  document.body.classList.remove("focus-visible")
);

document.addEventListener("keydown", ({key}) => 
  (key === "Tab") && document.body.classList.add("focus-visible")
);

/**
 * Cross-browser focus ring for explicit focus 
 * via keyboard-based (eg Tab) navigation or the
 * .focus-visible utility class.
 */
:focus {
  outline: 0;
  box-shadow:
    0 0 0 .2rem #fff,
    0 0 0 .35rem #069;
}

/**
 * Remove focus ring for non-explicit scenarios.
 */
body:not(.focus-visible) :focus:not(.focus-visible) {
  outline: 0 !important;
  box-shadow: none !important;
}

<h3>Defaults:</h3>
<button>Foo</button>
<input type="button" value="Bar"/> 
<select><option>Baz</option></select>
<input type="text" placeholder="Qux"/>
<textarea placeholder="Quux" rows="1"></textarea>

<h3>Force focus on click:</h3>
<button class="focus-visible">Foo</button>
<input class="focus-visible" type="button" value="Bar"/> 
<select class="focus-visible"><option>Baz</option></select>
<input class="focus-visible" type="text" placeholder="Qux"/>
<textarea class="focus-visible" placeholder="Quux" rows="1">
</textarea>

A note about accessibility

Removing all focus rings a la :focus { outline: none; } or :focus { outline: 0; } is a known accessibility issue and is never recommended. Additionally, there are folks in the accessibility community who would rather you never remove a focus ring outline and instead make everything have a :focus style — either outline or box-shadow could be valid if styled appropriately.

Finally, some folks in the accessibility community believe developers should not implement :focus-visible on their websites until all browsers implement and expose a user preference which lets people pick whether all items should be focusable or not. I personally don't subscribe to this thinking, which is why I provided this solution that I feel is far better than the harmful :focus { outline:none }. I think :focus-visible is a happy medium between design concerns and accessibility concerns. As of 2022, Chrome browser has exposed a user preference to set focus visibility styles, but FireFox has not.

Resource:

• https://css-tricks.com/keyboard-only-focus-styles/

Demo:

• https://wicg.github.io/focus-visible/demo/

Answer 4

Can't believe nobody has posted this yet.

Use a label instead of a button.

<label type="button" class="btn btn-primary btn-block">
<span class="icon-plus"></span> Add Page
</label>

Fiddle

Answer 5

Although it's easy to just remove outline for all focused buttons (as in user1933897's answer), but that solution is bad from the accessibility point of view (for example, see Stop Messing with the Browser's Default Focus outline)

On the other hand, it's probably impossible to convince your browser to stop styling your clicked button as focused if it thinks that it's focused after you clicked on it (I'm looking at you, Chrome on OS X).

So, what can we do? A couple options come to my mind.

1) Javascript (jQuery): $('.btn').mouseup(function() { this.blur() })

You're instructing your browser to remove the focus around any button immediately after the button is clicked. By using mouseup instead of click we're keeping the default behavior for keyboard-based interactions (mouseup doesn't get triggered by keyboard).

2) CSS: .btn:hover { outline: 0 !important }

Here you turn off outline for hovered buttons only. Obviously it's not ideal, but may be enough in some situations.

Answer 6

This worked for me. I created a custom class which overrides the necessary CSS.

.custom-button:focus {
    outline: none !important;
    border: none !important;
    -webkit-box-shadow: none !important;
    box-shadow: none !important;
}

The -webkit-box-shadow will work for Chrome and safari browsers.

Answer 7

This works for me, another solution not mentioned. Just throw it in the click event...

$(this).trigger("blur");

Or call it from another event/method...

$(".btn_name").trigger("blur");

Answer 8

I find a solution. when we focus, bootstrap use box-shadow, so we just disable it(not enough reputation, cannot upload image :( ).

I add

.btn:focus{
    box-shadow:none !important;
}

it works.

Answer 9

If you use the rule :focus { outline: none; } to remove outlines, the link or control will be focusable but with no indication of focus for keyboard users. Methods to remove it such with JS like onfocus="blur()" are even worse and will result in keyboard users being unable to interact with the control.

The hacks you can use, that are sort of OK, includes adding :focus { outline: none; } rules when users interacts with the mouse and remove them again if keyboard interaction is detected. Lindsay Evans has made a lib for this: https://github.com/lindsayevans/outline.js

But i would prefer to setting a class on the html or body tag. And have control in the CSS file of when to use this.

For example (inline event handlers is for demonstration purposes only):

<html>
<head>
<style>
  a:focus, button:focus {
    outline: 3px solid #000;
  }
  .no-focus a, .no-focus button {
    outline: none;
  } 
</style>
</head>
<body id="thebody" 
onmousedown="document.getElementById('thebody').classList.add('no-focus');"
onkeydown="document.getElementById('thebody').classList.remove('no-focus');">
    <p>This her is <a href="#">a link</a></p>   
    <button>Click me</button>
</body>
</html>

I did put togheter a Pen: http://codepen.io/snobojohan/pen/RWXXmp

But beware there are performance issues. This forces repaint every time the user switches between mouse and keyboard. More about Avoiding Unnecessary Paints http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/speed/unnecessary-paints/

Answer 10

I've noticed the same and even though it really annoys me, I believe there is no proper way of handling this.

I would recommend against all the other solutions given because they kill the accessibility of the button completely, so now, when you tab to the button, you won't get the expected focus.

This should be avoided!

.btn:focus {
  outline: none;
}

Answer 11

If the above doesn't work for you, try this:

.btn:focus {outline: none;box-shadow: none;border:2px solid transparent;}

As user1933897 pointed out, this might be specific to MacOS with Chrome.

Answer 12

Late, but who knows it may help someone. The CSS would look like:

.rhighlight{
   outline: none !important;
   box-shadow:none
}

The HTML would look like:

<button type="button" class="btn btn-primary rHighlight">Text</button> 

This way you can keep btn and it's associated behaviors.

Answer 13

For people wanting a pure css way to do that:

:focus:not(:focus-visible) { outline: none }

This could also work for link and so on, and bonus, it keeps the keyboard accessibilities. Lastly it is ignored by browsers that don’t support :focus-visible

Answer 14

I mentioned this in a comment above, but it's worth listing as a separate answer for clarity. As long as you don't need to ever actually have focus on the button, you can use the focus event to remove it before it can apply any CSS effects:

$('buttonSelector').focus(function(event) {
    event.target.blur();
});

This avoids the flicker that can be seen when using the click event. This does restrict the interface, and you won't be able to tab to the button, but that isn't a problem in all applications.

Answer 15

Style

.not-focusable:focus {
    outline: none;
    box-shadow: none;
}

Using

<button class="btn btn-primary not-focusable">My Button</button>

Answer 16

Try this solution for remove border around the button. Add this code in css.

Try

button:focus{
outline:0px;
}

If not works then use below.

button:focus{
 outline:none !important;
 }

Answer 17

It is work, I hope help you

.btn:focus, .btn:focus:active {
    outline: none;
}

Answer 18

For anyone who's using react-bootstrap and encountered this problem, here's what I did to make things work:

.btn:focus {
    /* the !important is really the key here, it overrides everything else */
    outline: none !important;
    box-shadow: none !important;
}

And things did not work before adding !important.

Answer 19

We were suffering a similar problem and noticed that Bootstrap 3 doesn't have the problem on their tabs (in Chrome). It looks like they're using outline-style which allows the browser to decide what best to do and Chrome seems to do what you want: show the outline when focused unless you just clicked the element.

Support for outline-style is hard to pin down since the browser gets to decide what that means. Best to check in a few browsers and have a fall-back rule.

Answer 20

Another possible solution is to add a class using a Javascript listener when the user clicks on the button and then remove that class on focus with another listener. This maintains accessibility (visible tabbing) while also preventing Chrome's quirky behaviour of considering a button focused when clicked.

JS:

$('button').click(function(){
    $(this).addClass('clicked');
});
$('button').focus(function(){
    $(this).removeClass('clicked');
});

CSS:

button:focus {
    outline: 1px dotted #000;
}
button.clicked {
    outline: none;
}

Full example here: https://jsfiddle.net/4bbb37fh/

Answer 21

.btn:focus:active {
  outline: none;
}

this removes the outline on click, but keeps the focus when tabbing (for a11y)

Answer 22

This works best

.btn-primary.focus, .btn-primary:focus {
-webkit-box-shadow: none!important;
box-shadow: none!important;
}

Answer 23

  .btn:focus,.btn:active, a{
        outline: none !important;
        box-shadow: none;
     }

this outline:none will work for both button and a tag

Answer 24

You can set tabIndex="-1". It will make browser to skip this button when you TAB through focusable controls.

Other "fixes" suggested here, only remove focus outline, but still leaves buttons tabable. However, from usability point of view, you already removed glow, so your user won't know what is currently focused button, any way.

On other hand, making button non-tabable have accessibility implications.

I'm using it to remove focus outline from X button in bootstrap modal, which have duplicate "Close" button at the bottom any way, so my solution have no impact on accessibility.

Answer 25

Add this in CSS:

*, ::after, ::before {
    box-sizing: border-box;
    outline: none !important;
    border: none !important;
    -webkit-box-shadow: none !important;
    box-shadow: none !important;
}

Answer 26

I found a solution simply add below line in your css code.

button:focus { outline: none }

Answer 27

I found no solid answers that didn't either break accessibility or subvert functionality.

Perhaps combining a few will work better overall.

<h1
  onmousedown="this.style.outline='none';"
  onclick="this.blur(); runFn(this);"
  onmouseup="this.style.outline=null;"
>Hello</h1>

function runFn(thisElem) { console.log('Hello: ', thisElem); }

Answer 28

A bit nuclear, but this is simple way that worked for me on Angular 9. Use with causon since it affects every html element.

*:focus {
  outline: 0 !important;
}

Answer 29

Although the CSS solutions offered here work,

for anyone who prefers to use the Bootstrap 4 way, as suggested in the official Bootstrap Theming guide, this should help:

in your custom.scss file (see guide above ^) where you add your variable overrides, add the following variable to remove the box-shadow for buttons:

// import bootstrap's variables & functions to override them
@import "node_modules/bootstrap/scss/functions";
@import "node_modules/bootstrap/scss/variables";
@import "node_modules/bootstrap/scss/mixins";

// override the variables you want (you can look them up in node_modules/bootstrap/scss/variables file, they're the ones that have the !default keyword at the end)
$btn-focus-box-shadow: none;

// option A: include all of Bootstrap (see the above guide for other options)
@import "node_modules/bootstrap/scss/bootstrap";

this works for me.

please note that there are many variables in bootstrap's variables file for box-shadow, for other controls as well, so it might require some more research on your side if you want to use them and/or this specific variable doesn't work for you.