Remove a class from multiple elements using JavaScript

Remove a class from multiple elements using JavaScript #

To remove a class from multiple elements:

Use the document.querySelectorAll method to select the elements.
Use the forEach() method to iterate over the collection.
Use the classList.remove() method to remove the class from each element.

Here is the HTML for the examples in this article.

index.html

Copied!
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
  </head>

  <body>
    <div class="box big">Box 1</div>
    <div class="box big">Box 2</div>
    <div class="box big">Box 3</div>

    <script src="index.js"></script>
  </body>
</html>

And here is the related JavaScript code.

index.js

Copied!
const boxes = document.querySelectorAll('.box');

boxes.forEach(box => {
  // ✅ Remove class from each element
  box.classList.remove('big');

  // ✅ Add class to each element
  // box.classList.add('small');
});

We used the document.querySelectorAll method to select all DOM elements with a class of box.

Note that if you use another method, e.g. document.getElementsByClassName, you might have to convert the return value to an array before calling the forEach() method.

index.js

Copied!
const boxes = Array.from(document.getElementsByClassName('box'));

boxes.forEach(box => {
  // ✅ Remove class from each element
  box.classList.remove('big');

  // ✅ Add class to each element
  // box.classList.add('small');
});

The function we passed to the forEach method gets called with each element in the array.

On each iteration, we used the classList.remove() method to remove a class from the element.

Note that you can pass as many classes as necessary to the classList.remove() method.

index.js

Copied!
const boxes = Array.from(document.getElementsByClassName('box'));

boxes.forEach(box => {
  // ✅ Remove class from each element
  box.classList.remove('big', 'medium', 'large');
});

If any of the provided class names are not present on the element, the remove() method ignores them and no error is thrown.

If you need to add a class to each element in the collection, you can use the classList.add() method.

index.js

Copied!
const boxes = Array.from(document.getElementsByClassName('box'));

boxes.forEach(box => {
  // ✅ Remove class from each element
  box.classList.remove('big');

  // ✅ Add class to each element
  box.classList.add('small');
});

If the elements you are removing a class from have different identifiers, e.g. class names, ids, etc, you can pass multiple comma-separated selectors to the querySelectorAll method.

index.html

Copied!
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
  </head>

  <body>
    <div class="box1 big">Box 1</div>
    <div class="box2 big">Box 2</div>
    <div class="box3 big">Box 3</div>

    <script src="index.js"></script>
  </body>
</html>

And here is the related JavaScript code.

index.js

Copied!
const boxes = document.querySelectorAll('.box1, .box2, .box3');

boxes.forEach(box => {
  box.classList.remove('big');
});

We selected the elements with classes box1, box2 and box3 and removed a class from each element in the collection.

You can pass as many comma-separated selectors as necessary to the document.querySelectorAll method.

Remove a class from multiple elements using JavaScript

Remove a class from multiple elements using JavaScript #

Join my newsletter

Borislav Hadzhiev