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How you can style the input file type in forms using CSS

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Ordinary input of type file in webpages comes with a default style and the caption, “Choose file”. The good news is that we can style and tweak it to what we want.

<input type="file" accept="image/png, image/jpg, image/gif, image/jpeg"/>
A default view of the input file type on a web page

Styling the input file type

There are three steps to styling the input file in forms:

  1. Wrap the <input> element with the type="file" attribute inside a <label> element. Also, we can add more elements or icons within a <label> element.
<label for="inputTag">
Select Image
<input id="inputTag" type="file"/>
</label>
  1. Change the display of the input[type="file"] tag to none in CSS:
input[type="file"]{
display: none;
}
  1. Style the label element:
label{
cursor: pointer;
}

Code

Code example for styling the input file type in forms using CSS

Conclusion

We have looked at how to style the input file type that normally appears in a default “Choose file” format. One of these ways is to set the display to none. This way, we can style the label and add some icons.

RELATED TAGS

css

CONTRIBUTOR

Theodore Kelechukwu Onyejiaku
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