Element: scrollLeft property

Value

A double-precision floating-point value indicating the number of pixels by which the element is currently scrolled horizontally from the origin, where a positive value means the element is scrolled to the right (to reveal more content to the right). If the element isn't scrolled at all left or right, then scrollLeft is 0. If the document is not the active document, the returned value is 0. If the document is rendered on a subpixel-precise device, then the returned value is also subpixel-precise and may contain a decimal component.

It's possible for scrollLeft to be negative if the element can be scrolled to the left from the initial containing block. For example, if the element's direction is rtl (right-to-left) and content grows to the left, then scrollLeft is 0 when the scrollbar is at its rightmost position (at the start of the scrolled content), and then increasingly negative as you scroll towards the end of the content.

Safari responds to overscrolling by updating scrollLeft beyond the maximum scroll position (unless the default "bounce" effect is disabled, such as by setting overscroll-behavior to none), while Chrome and Firefox do not.

The scrollLeft property can be set, which causes the element to scroll to the specified horizontal position, in the same way as using Element.scroll() with behavior: "auto".

Examples

HTML

<div id="container">
  <div id="content">Click the button to slide right!</div>
</div>

<button id="slide" type="button">Slide right</button>

CSS

#container {
  width: 100px;
  height: 100px;
  border: 1px solid #cccccc;
  overflow-x: scroll;
}

#content {
  width: 250px;
  background-color: #cccccc;
}

JavaScript

const button = document.getElementById("slide");

button.onclick = () => {
  document.getElementById("container").scrollLeft += 20;
};

Result

Specifications

Browser compatibility

See also

• Determining the dimensions of elements
• HTMLElement.offsetLeft
• Element.clientLeft
• Element.scrollHeight
• Element.scrollWidth
• Element.scrollTop
• Element.getBoundingClientRect()
• Element.scrollTo()