HTMLDialogElement: close event

Baseline

Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since March 2022.

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The close event is fired on an HTMLDialogElement object when the <dialog> it represents has been closed.

This event is not cancelable and does not bubble.

Syntax

Use the event name in addEventListener():

addEventListener("close", (event) => { })

Alternatively, assign to the event handler property of the interface:

onclose = (event) => { }

Event type

A generic Event.

Examples

Handling `close` events

This example demonstrates how to listen for close events triggered by several different methods for closing a dialog:

Calling the close() method
A form with method="dialog". Submitting the form closes the dialog and causes a submit event to be fired, without submitting data or clearing the form
The Esc key. See cancel event

HTML

html

<dialog id="dialog">
  <form method="dialog">
    <button type="submit">Close via method="dialog"</button>
  </form>
  <p><button id="close">Close via .close() method</button></p>
  <p>Or hit the <kbd>Esc</kbd> key</p>
</dialog>

<button id="open">Open dialog</button>

<pre id="log"></pre>

#log {
  height: 170px;
  overflow: scroll;
  padding: 0.5rem;
  border: 1px solid black;
}

const logElement = document.getElementById("log");
function log(text, clear = false) {
  if (clear) {
    logElement.innerText = "";
  }
  logElement.innerText = `${logElement.innerText}${text}\n`;
  logElement.scrollTop = logElement.scrollHeight;
}

JavaScript

const dialog = document.getElementById("dialog");
const openButton = document.getElementById("open");
const closeButton = document.getElementById("close");

openButton.addEventListener("click", () => {
  log("open button click event fired", true);
  log("dialog showModal() called");
  dialog.showModal();
});

closeButton.addEventListener("click", () => {
  log("close button click event fired");
  log("dialog close() called");
  dialog.close();
});

dialog.addEventListener("close", (event) => {
  log("dialog close event fired");
});

Result

Specifications

Specification
HTML> # event-close>

Browser compatibility

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This page was last modified on Oct 26, 2026 by MDN contributors.

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