mdn
html.elements.datalist - Reports working for Safari, the textual type and date and time type examples do not work
What type of issue is this?
Incorrect support data (example: BrowserX says "86" but support was added in "40")
What information was incorrect, unhelpful, or incomplete?
Datalist is supposed to work in Safari on macOS, but none of the examples actually work. I.e. no autocomplete dropdown opens, the datalist has no effect. An arrow does appear in the input field, but clicking it has no effect.
What browsers does this problem apply to, if applicable?
Safari
What did you expect to see?
In the first example under "Try it", when I type "C" I expect it to suggest "Chocolate" and "Coconut" in a dropdown under the input field. I also expect the list of suggestions to show when I click the arrow in the input field.
Did you test this? If so, how?
I tested this by trying the examples on https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/Elements/datalist in Safari 18.6 (20621.3.11.11.3) and Safari Technology Preview Release 225 (WebKit 20623.1.1.1) on macOS 15.6 (24G84).
Can you link to any release notes, bugs, pull requests, or MDN pages related to this?
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/Elements/datalist
Do you have anything more you want to share?
No response
MDN URL
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/Elements/datalist
MDN metadata
MDN page report details
- Query:
html.elements.datalist - Report started: 2025-08-19T07:45:46.152Z
I cannot reproduce in Safari 18.6 both with the Try it demo, and this example:
Is there anything I'm missing?
Okay, I see what you mean. Browser support appears to vary:
| Input type | Chrome | Firefox | Safari |
|---|---|---|---|
| Text | 🟢 | 🟢 | 🟢 |
| Time | 🟢 | 🔴 | 🔴 |
| Range | 🟡 | 🟡 | 🟡 |
We could probably add subfeatures for using datalists in these different contexts, but note that the range example looks the same in all browsers (apart from the ticks being below in Chrome, and above in Firefox/Safari), so BCD considers this as the "de facto" standard, see: https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data/blob/main/docs/data-guidelines/index.md#partial_implementation-general-usage-guidelines
The browser's support is inconsistent with at least one other browser.
@fschroiff Would you mind updating issue title and description? It currently says that "none of the examples actually work", but that does not appear to be accurate.
Sorry @caugner: On my machine the textual types examples don't work. No idea what I am doing wrong... This is now Safari 26 on the same machine.
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/5c4d8cae-523c-4ff7-a43d-38cb75872811