Skip to content

How to remove all children from a DOM element

Given a DOM element, how do you remove all its children?

Given an item in the DOM, use querySelector() to identify it, like this:

const item = document.querySelector('#itemId')

then, to remove all its children elements, you have a few different solutions.

The fastest way looks like this:

item.innerHTML = ''

Another solution that is suggested is this: create a loop, check if the firstChild property is defined (the element has at least a child) and then remove it:

const item = document.querySelector('#itemId')
while (item.firstChild) {
  item.removeChild(item.firstChild)
}

The loop ends when all children are removed.

The first, in most performance benchmarks I checked, looks like being the fastest solution.


→ I wrote 17 books to help you become a better developer:

  • C Handbook
  • Command Line Handbook
  • CSS Handbook
  • Express Handbook
  • Git Cheat Sheet
  • Go Handbook
  • HTML Handbook
  • JS Handbook
  • Laravel Handbook
  • Next.js Handbook
  • Node.js Handbook
  • PHP Handbook
  • Python Handbook
  • React Handbook
  • SQL Handbook
  • Svelte Handbook
  • Swift Handbook
...download them all now!

Also, JOIN MY CODING BOOTCAMP, an amazing cohort course that will be a huge step up in your coding career - covering React, Next.js - next edition February 2025

Bootcamp 2025

Join the waiting list