Using the jQuery fadeTo Method to Change the Opacity of an Element

To change the opacity of an element, we can use the jQuery fadeTo method. The jQuery fadeTo() method will change the opacity of an element at a speed and transparency that you can set.

$("#div1").fadeTo(1000, .5);

In the code above, the first number “1000” is the number of milliseconds you want the fade to happen by, which in this case is 1000 milliseconds or 1 second.

The second number, .5, is the opacity you want the element to have. Here it will have an opacity of .5, so you will be able to see almost halfway through the div.

Let’s say we have the following HTML:

<style>#div1 { background: green; }</style>
<div id="div1">
  <p>This is some div</p>
</div>

If we want to change the opacity of #div1, we can use the jQuery fadeTo() method in the following JavaScript code.

$("#div1").fadeTo(2000, .2);

The above code would change the opacity of #div1 to .2, gradually over 2 seconds.

If you are using WordPress, don’t forget to change the $ to jQuery as below:

jQuery("#div1").fadeTo(2000, .2);

Let’s see this in action in the example below.

Using the jQuery fadeTo Method to Change the Opacity of a Div with a Click

In this simple example, we will have a div with a greenish background. We will provide a button for the user to use to change the div’s opacity.

<style>#div2 { width: 300px; height: 200px; background: #7bbfa2; }</style>
<div id="div1">
  <div id="div2"></div>
  <div id="click-me">Change opacity</div>
</div>

We can utilize both the jQuery click() method and jQuery fadeTo() method to change the opacity.

Below is the JavaScript code which will allow the user to be able to change the opacity of the div. We will change the div to have an opacity of .2(barely visible), over a 5 second period(5000 milliseconds):

$("#click-me").click(function(){
  $("#div2").fadeTo(5000, .2);
});

The final code and output for this example of using the jQuery fadeTo method to change the opacity of a div is below:

Code Output:

Full Code:

<style>#div2 { width: 300px; height: 200px; background: #7bbfa2; }</style>
<div id="div1">
  <div id="div2"></div>
  <div id="click-me">Change opacity</div>
</div>

<script>

$("#click-me").click(function(){
  $("#div2").fadeTo(5000, .2);
});

</script>

Hopefully this article has been useful for you to understand how to use the jQuery fadeTo() method.