CanvasRenderingContext2D: direction property

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

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The CanvasRenderingContext2D.direction property of the Canvas 2D API specifies the current text direction used to draw text.

Value

Possible values:

"ltr": The text direction is left-to-right.
"rtl": The text direction is right-to-left.
"inherit": The text direction is inherited from the <canvas> element or the Document as appropriate. Default value.

The default value is "inherit".

Examples

Changing text direction

This example draws two pieces of text. The first one is left-to-right, and the second is right-to-left. Note that "Hi!" in ltr becomes "!Hi" in rtl.

HTML

html

<canvas id="canvas"></canvas>

JavaScript

const canvas = document.getElementById("canvas");
const ctx = canvas.getContext("2d");

ctx.font = "48px serif";
ctx.fillText("Hi!", 150, 50);
ctx.direction = "rtl";
ctx.fillText("Hi!", 150, 130);

Result

Specifications

Specification
HTML # dom-context-2d-direction-dev