HTML transitioncancel DOM Event: Reference and Examples

When someone interacts with a webpage, the browser sends events to the relevant JavaScript code. The transitioncancel event happens when a CSS transition stops before finishing.

When transitioncancel happens

A CSS transition stops before finishing.

You can listen for it using addEventListener(). That keeps event handling separate from HTML attributes such as onclick and works well with modern code organization.

A small working example

<style>
    .animated-box { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 1s; }
    .animated-box:hover { opacity: .3; }
</style>
<div id="demo-target" class="animated-box">Animate this box with CSS</div>
<p id="event-status" role="status">Waiting for transitioncancel...</p>
<script>
    const eventTarget = document.getElementById("demo-target");
    const eventStatus = document.getElementById("event-status");

    if (eventTarget) {
        eventTarget.addEventListener("transitioncancel", (eventDetails) => {
            eventStatus.textContent = "transitioncancel event received";
            console.log(eventDetails.type, eventDetails.target);
        });
    }
</script>

Reading the code

The browser listens for transitioncancel on the relevant target. When the event occurs, the callback receives eventDetails, updates the status message and logs the event name and target in Developer Tools.

Remove the transitioning element or change the property mid-transition.

The CSS rule above makes the animation or transition possible. Without a real animated property, a listener alone cannot make these events fire.

Try it in your browser

Open the page, show the Console panel, and follow this test: Remove the transitioning element or change the property mid-transition. Then change one thing in the example and observe whether the event still fires.

Common Beginner Mistakes

• Expecting transitioncancel to fire without its required user action or browser condition.
• Remove the transitioning element or change the property mid-transition.
• Adding repeated event listeners without considering cleanup or unwanted side effects.

Key Takeaways

• transitioncancel reports a CSS transition stops before finishing.
• addEventListener("transitioncancel", ...) listens for the event on the appropriate target.
• Remove the transitioning element or change the property mid-transition.