Move mouse pointer in JavaScript

Question

Is it possible to move the mouse so that it is positioned inside a text input using JavaScript?

You can, however move a pointer shaped image and pretend that you can. :-) — Andras Vass, Feb 23 '10 at 23:38
Better yet, you can move a cat image around, following the mouse cursor, and try to use it to chase the cursor into the position you want. — jball, Feb 23 '10 at 23:40
It's be a nightmare if mouse pointer or cursor can be moved. Havoc will break loose! — o.k.w, Feb 23 '10 at 23:49
Just make the textbox big enough and never worry anymore. The mouse will always be inside of it. — Andras Vass, Feb 24 '10 at 00:39
This browser experiment does seems to move cursor https://javier.xyz/control-user-cursor/ — B L Λ C K, Oct 29 '17 at 15:18
Are you guys sure about that. What about dispatching your own mouse events? https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/EventTarget/dispatchEvent — Azmisov, May 16 '19 at 18:45

score 29 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 23 '21 at 22:50

29

I don't know about moving the actual rendered mouse pointer, but could you just set the focus on the element?

document.getElementById('the_text_input_id').focus()

edited Jun 23 '21 at 22:50

BarryCap

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answered Feb 23 '10 at 23:34

jasonbar

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13

impossible to move the mouse, confirmed. – dusoft Feb 23 '10 at 23:36

JP Silvashy · Answer 2 · 2019-07-29T19:06:29.600

7

Please see this question:

Mouse move on element

Besides that, I think you are committing major design mistake by taking control of any of the users input in any way (maybe besides setting the focus of a form element)

edited Jul 29 '19 at 19:06

answered Feb 23 '10 at 23:51

JP Silvashy

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score 7 · Answer 3 · edited Jun 24 '21 at 02:22

Here is a function that select text in an input or textarea:

function textSelect(inp, s, e) {
    e = e || s;
    if (inp.createTextRange) {
        var r = inp.createTextRange();
        r.collapse(true);
        r.moveEnd('character', e);
        r.moveStart('character', s);
        r.select();
    } else if (inp.setSelectionRange) {
        inp.focus();
        inp.setSelectionRange(s, e);
    }
}

To place the cursor at the 12^th position:

textSelect(document.getElementById('theInput'), 12);

To select a portion of the input field:

textSelect(document.getElementById('theInput'), 12, 15);

score 4 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 26 '10 at 18:22

It would be a huge [security?] issue if they allowed for something like this. Imagine: you have a setInterval(function(){moveMouseToTopLeftCorner and alert garbage}, 1)...
The user would have his mouse moved to the top left. And then alert would show up [which could be closed with enter].. upon which an alert would immediately pop up again.

You'd actually have to use your keyboard to open taskmanager and kill the browser >_>

However, it is probably possible with ActiveX [although thats IE only... and dumb]

Move mouse pointer in JavaScript

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