How to set focus to a materialUI TextField?

You can use the autoFocus attribute.

<TextField value="some value" autoFocus />

autoFocus was also not working for me, perhaps since this is a component that's not mounted when the top-level component loads. I had to do something a lot more convoluted to get it to work:

function AutoFocusTextField(props) {
const inputRef = React.useRef();


React.useEffect(() => {
const timeout = setTimeout(() => {
inputRef.current.focus();
}, 100);


return () => {
clearTimeout(timeout);
};
}, []);


return <TextField inputRef={inputRef} {...props} />;
}

Note that for some reason it does not work without the setTimeout. For more info see https://github.com/callemall/material-ui/issues/1594.

For React 16.8.6, you should use the inputRef property of TextField to set focus. I tried ref property but it doesn't work.

<TextField
inputRef={input => input && input.focus()}
/>

Material-ui doc says:

inputRef: Use this property to pass a ref callback to the native input component.

AlienKevin is correct ( pass a ref callback to "TextField.inputProps" ), but you can also save the element reference on your "this" object, so that you can set focus later. Here is an example in Coffeescript:

TextField
inputProps:
ref: (el)=>
if el?
@input_element = el


Button
onClick:=>
@input_element.focus()

For a material ui TextField you need to input the props for autoFocus in a inputProps object like this.

 <TextField inputProps=\{\{ autoFocus: true }} />

If you are using material-ui TextField and react functional component, you can pass inputRef in your TextField component. The trick here is the if condition if(input != null).

<TextField
variant="filled"
inputRef={(input) => {
if(input != null) {
input.focus();
}
}}
/>

Here is an working example for you. CodeSandBox- Material-ui-TextFieldFocus

This code is actually good, but has a drawback, on every render it's going to create a new function. It easily can be solved using useCallback

<TextField
inputRef={input => input && input.focus()}
/>

Should be

const callbackRef = useCallback((inputElement) => {
if (inputElement) {
inputElement.focus();
}
}, []);
...
<TextField
inputRef={callbackRef}
/>

This will focus the component every time it renders. Other solutions I tried only focus the element an initial time.

  const inputRef = React.useRef<HTMLInputElement>();
  

useEffect(() => {
inputRef.current?.focus();
}, [inputRef.current]);


const setTextInputRef = (element: HTMLInputElement) => {
inputRef.current = element;
};
   

return (
<TextField
inputRef={setTextInputRef}
/>

I am using this solution, works for text fields inspired by https://gist.github.com/carpben/de968e377cbac0ffbdefe1ab56237573

const useFocus = (): [any, () => void] => {
const htmlElRef: MutableRefObject<any> = useRef<HTMLDivElement>();
const setFocus = (): void => {
if (!htmlElRef || !htmlElRef.current) return
const div = htmlElRef.current as HTMLDivElement
if (!div) return
const input = div.querySelector("input")
if (input) input.focus()
}
return [htmlElRef, setFocus];
};




export function MyComp() {
const [ref, setFocus] = useFocus()
  

// use setFocus() to focus the input field


return <Input ref={ref} />
}

 const handleClick =  () => {
inputRef.current.firstChild.focus();
inputRef.current.firstChild.placeholder = '';
}
<InputBase
value={value}
ref={inputRef}
placeholder="search" />
<Button onClick={handleClick}>Click</Button>

add this propery to your TextField component :

inputRef={(input) => input?.focus()}

useRef hook simple example:

const focusMe_Ref = useRef(null); // 1. create


useEffect(() => {
focusMe_Ref.current.focus();  // 2. startup
}, []);




...


<TextField
inputRef={focusMe_Ref} // 3. will focused
...
/>

I had a similar problem where the input field didn't regain focus after I've modified its contents with external controls (an emoji picker). I ended up with this brute workaround hook:

const useEnforceFocusTextField = (textFieldRef: React.RefObject<HTMLInputElement>) => {
const [enforcedRerender, setEnforcedRerender] = useState(false);
React.useEffect(() => {
textFieldRef.current?.focus();
const timeout = setTimeout(() => {
textFieldRef.current?.focus();
}, 100);
return () => clearTimeout(timeout);
}, [enforcedRerender]);
return () => setEnforcedRerender((n) => !n);
};

From the outside, you call utilize this hook in the following manner:

const textFieldRef = useRef<HTMLInputElement>(null);
...
// enforceFocus() can be called in any callback to set the focus to the textfield
const enforceFocus = useEnforceFocusTextField(textFieldRef);
...
return <TextField inputRef={textFieldRef} ... />