Textarea

Installation

To get started, install Headless UI via npm:

npm install @headlessui/react

Basic example

Textareas are built using the Textarea component:

import { Textarea } from '@headlessui/react'

function Example() {
  return <Textarea name="description"></Textarea>
}

You can pass any props to a Textarea that you'd normally pass to the native textarea element.

Styling

Headless UI keeps track of a lot of state about each component, like whether or not a textarea is focused, whether a popover is open or closed, or which item in a menu is currently focused via the keyboard.

But because the components are headless and completely unstyled out of the box, you can't see this information in your UI until you provide the styles you want for each state yourself.

Using data attributes

The easiest way to style the different states of a Headless UI component is using the data-* attributes that each component exposes.

For example, the Textarea component exposes a data-focus attribute, which tells you if the textarea is currently focused via the mouse or keyboard, and a data-hover attribute, which tells you if the textarea is currently being hovered by the mouse.

<!-- Rendered `Textarea` -->
<textarea name="description" data-focus data-hover></textarea>

Use the CSS attribute selector to conditionally apply styles based on the presence of these data attributes. If you're using Tailwind CSS, the data attribute modifier makes this easy:

import { Textarea } from '@headlessui/react'

function Example() {
  return <Textarea name="description" className="border data-[hover]:shadow data-[focus]:bg-blue-100"></Textarea>
}

See the component API for a list of all the available data attributes.

Using render props

Each component also exposes information about its current state via render props that you can use to conditionally apply different styles or render different content.

For example, the Textarea component exposes a focus state, which tells you if the textarea is currently focused via the mouse or keyboard, and a hover state, which tells you if the textarea is currently being hovered by the mouse.

import { Textarea } from '@headlessui/react'
import clsx from 'clsx'
import { Fragment } from 'react'

function Example() {
  return (
    <Textarea name="description" as={Fragment}>
      {({ focus, hover }) => (
        <textarea className={clsx('border', focus && 'bg-blue-100', hover && 'shadow')}></textarea>
      )}
    </Textarea>
  )
}

See the component API for a list of all the available render props.

Examples

Adding a label

Wrap a Label and Textarea with the Field component to automatically associate them using a generated ID:

import { Field, Label, Textarea } from '@headlessui/react'

function Example() {
  return (
    <Field>
      <Label>Description</Label>
      <Textarea name="description"></Textarea>
    </Field>
  )
}

Adding a description

Use the Description component within a Field to automatically associate it with a Textarea using the aria-describedby attribute:

import { Description, Field, Label, Textarea } from '@headlessui/react'

function Example() {
  return (
    <Field>
      <Label>Description</Label>
      <Description>Add any extra information about your event here.</Description>
      <Textarea name="description"></Textarea>
    </Field>
  )
}

Disabling a textarea

Add the disabled prop to the Field component to disable a Textarea and its associated Label and Description:

import { Description, Field, Label, Textarea } from '@headlessui/react'

function Example() {
  return (
    <Field disabled>
      <Label className="data-[disabled]:opacity-50">Name</Label>
      <Description className="data-[disabled]:opacity-50">Add any extra information about your event here.</Description>
      <Textarea name="description" className="data-[disabled]:bg-gray-100"></Textarea>
    </Field>
  )
}

You can also disable a textarea outside of a Field by adding the disabled prop directly to the Textarea itself.

Component API

Textarea

A thin wrapper around the native textarea element.

Field

Label

Description