Disable / enable an input with jQuery?

Matthew C.

The Problem

You want to enable or disable an input using jQuery. How do you do this?

The Solution

You can disable an input using the jQuery .attr() method to set the value of an input’s disabled attribute. To enable the input, you can use the jQuery .removeAttr() method.

For example, if you have the following input:

<input type="checkbox" id="subscribeInput" name="subscribeInput" />
<label for="subscribeInput">Subscribe</label>
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You can use the disabled attribute to add disable and enable buttons:

<button id="enableBtn">Enable subscribe</button>
<button id="disableBtn">Disable subscribe</button>
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Then you can use the jQuery attr() method to enable the input when the “Enable subscribe” button is clicked and the removeAttr() method to disable the input when the “Disable subscribe” button is clicked:

import $ from 'jquery';

const subscribeInput = $('#subscribeInput');
const disableBtn = $('#disableBtn');
const enableBtn = $('#enableBtn');

disableBtn.click(() => subscribeInput.attr('disabled', 'disabled'));
enableBtn.click(() => subscribeInput.removeAttr('disabled'));
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Here we disable the input by setting the value of the disabled attribute to disabled and enable the input by removing the disabled attribute.

If you wanted to disable an input using HTML, you can add the disabled attribute like this:

<input type="checkbox" id="subscribeInput" name="subscribeInput" disabled />
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You can also use vanilla JavaScript to enable and disable inputs using the instance methods setAttribute() and removeAttribute() of the Element Web API:

const subscribeInput = document.getElementById('subscribeInput');
const disableBtn = document.getElementById('disableBtn');
const enableBtn = document.getElementById('enableBtn');

disableBtn.addEventListener('click', () =>
  subscribeInput.setAttribute('disabled', 'disabled')
);

enableBtn.addEventListener('click', () =>
  subscribeInput.removeAttribute('disabled')
);
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Note that when an input is disabled, it’s not mutable or focusable, and it’s not submitted with a form. If you set the disabled attribute of a <fieldset> that contains multiple inputs, all of the inputs in the <fieldset> will be disabled.