Skip to main content

Read Mode / Edit Mode

Lexical supports two modes:

  • Read mode
  • Edit mode

The default behavior for Lexical is edit mode, or more accurately not read only mode. Under-the-hood, the main implementation detail is that the contentEditable is being set to "false" or "true" depending on the mode. Specific plugins can listen to the mode change too – allowing them to customize parts of the UI depending on the mode.

Setting the mode​

In order to set the mode, this can be done on creation of the editor:

const editor = createEditor({
  editable: true,
  ...
})

If you're using @lexical/react this can be done on the initialConfig passed to <LexicalComposer>:

<LexicalComposer initialConfig={{editable: true}}>
  ...
</LexicalComposer>

After an editor is created, the mode can be changed imperatively:

editor.setEditable(true);

Reading the mode​

In order to find the current mode of the editor you can use:

const isEditable = editor.isEditable(); // Returns true or false

You can also get notified when the editor's read only mode has changed:

const removeEditableListener = editor.registerEditableListener(
  (isEditable) => {
    // The editor's mode is passed in!
    console.log(isEditable);
  },
);

// Do not forget to unregister the listener when no longer needed!
removeEditableListener();