# UI Text Input Focus

**URL:** <https://discourse.nodered.org/t/ui-text-input-focus/8053>\
**Category:** Dashboard\
**Created:** [16 February 2019 17:27 UTC](https://discourse.nodered.org/t/ui-text-input-focus/8053 "2019-02-16T17:27:57Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 3

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![coffeegoat](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex026/user_avatar/discourse.nodered.org/coffeegoat/32/16978_2.png) [@coffeegoat](https://discourse.nodered.org/u/coffeegoat)\
**Post date:** [7 October 2019 20:04 UTC](https://discourse.nodered.org/t/ui-text-input-focus/8053/3 "2019-10-07T20:04:43Z")

</div>

I worked on it for a while but was unable to get a trigger event/function to re-catch the focus on the start up box. There were a variety of examples I found where the standard JS approach was to use the getElementByID("ID").focus() method but as I understand it the ID of a node can/does change so it isn't possible to use it as a method to move focus around. Am I missing something here and this is the right way to do it?

Eventually I just gave up and switched tabs back and forth to make the focus go back to the first text entry box. It's a bit of a hack, but I need to get on to other things.

---

_[View the full topic](https://discourse.nodered.org/t/ui-text-input-focus/8053)._