Remove the focus from a button on click in React

In this tutorial, we are going to learn about how to remove the focus from a button element on click in React.

Consider, we have the following button in our React app.

import React from "react";

function App() {

  return (
    <div>
      <button>Search</button>
    </div>
  );
}

Now, when a user clicks on the button we need to remove the focus of it.

Removing the focus from a button on click

To remove the focus from a button on click, first we need to access the button inside the react component using the useRef hook then call a blur() method on it. So, it removes the focus of a button.

Here is an example:

import React, {useRef} from "react";

function App() {
   const buttonRef = useRef(null)

   function handleClick(){
    buttonRef.current.blur(); // removing focus
  }

  return (
    <div>
      <button onClick={handleClick} ref={buttonRef}>
         Search
      </button>    </div>
  );
}

In the example above, we first added a buttonRef to the button element. So, it allows us to access and modify the dom node of an button inside the component methods.

Next, we added a buttonRef.current.blur() method inside the handleClick() event handler, so when a Search button is clicked it removes the focus from a button.

We used the HTMLElement.blur() to remove the focus from a element.

The blur() method removes the keyboard focus from the element, where it was called on.

If you want to set a focus back to the button, then call a focus() method on it.

buttonRef.current.focus(); // adding the focus