Add placeholder text to div with contenteditable=”true”

You may have come across the contenteditable attribute. It’s used in many places. It’s a much better alternative to something like a textarea. You can add `contenteditable=”true”` to any div and then it acts like an input field. In this article, I will show you how to add placeholder to text to it as it doesn’t support the `placeholder` attribute right out of the box.

The code needed

div[contenteditable] {
  &[placeholder]:empty::before {
    content: attr(placeholder);
    z-index: 9;
    line-height: 1.7;
    color: #555;
    word-break: break-all;
    user-select: none;
  }

  &[placeholder]:empty:focus::before {
    content: "";
  }
}

That’s all the code you need! However, if you only add that to the CSS then it won’t work. You need to add a `placeholder` attribute to your HTML and also ensure that the div is visible.

Full code / Example

HTML

<div contenteditable="true" placeholder="Subscribe to Axorax on YT! :D"></div>

CSS

div[contenteditable] {
  /* Basic styles */
  width: 20rem;
  height: 15rem;
  padding: 1rem;
  background: #292929;
  color: #fff;

  /* Placeholder code */
  &[placeholder]:empty::before {
    content: attr(placeholder);
    z-index: 9;
    line-height: 1.7;
    color: #555;
    word-break: break-all;
    user-select: none;
  }

  &[placeholder]:empty:focus::before {
    content: "";
  }
}

That’s all there is to it. Hope you find it useful!