Monitoring Which Element Has Focus in a Web Browser

While building accessibility-minded websites, it’s useful to be able to monitor which element has focus in your browser.

Using a screen reader works well, but there may be an easier solution for those who aren’t used to screen readers.

Chrome makes this pretty simple. See https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools/accessibility/focus.

In Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and other browsers I’m able to achieve similar functionality (maybe even better) by running a simple snippet in the web developer tools console.

New lines appear as you move through the elements with your keyboard (or mouse).

You may want to turn this into a one-liner for easier pasting.

var lastElement = document.activeElement;
setInterval(function() {
  if (lastElement != document.activeElement) {
    lastElement = document.activeElement;
    console.log(document.activeElement);
  }
}, 100);

var lastElement = document.activeElement;

setInterval(function() {

if (lastElement != document.activeElement) {

lastElement = document.activeElement;

console.log(document.activeElement);

}

}, 100);

Output in Firefox:

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Monitoring Which Element Has Focus in a Web Browser

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Rob Levin

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