jQuery mouseleave – An Interactive Example of the mouseleave Method

We can use the jQuery mouseleave method to run a function when a user moves their mouse out of a div. To do this we can add a function call to the mouseleave() method.

$("#div1").mouseleave(function() {
  //The user has moved their mouse out of #div1
});

Another way this can be done is to use the .on() method:

$("#div1").on("mouseleave", function() {
    //The user has moved their mouse out of #div1
});

The jQuery mouseleave() method is very similar to the mouseout() method, the main difference being that the mouseout method will trigger when you mouse out of any child elements of the div, while the mouseleave method will not. We will show this in the example below.

An example using the jQuery mouseleave method

In this example, we will have 3 divs set up next to each other. One div will be empty, and the other two will have a child element that takes up half of the div. We will add some CSS to float the divs next to each other and display the text in the center.

Here is the HTML setup:

<style>#div1, #div2, #div3 { float: left; height: 200px; width: 200px; border: 1px solid #444; margin-right: 20px; } #child1, #child2 { height: 100px; width: 100%; background: #ddd; display: flex; align-items: center; justify-content: center; padding: 5px; } .clear { clear: both; }</style>
<div id="div1">div1</div>
<div id="div2">
  <div id="child1">mouseleave method</div>
</div>
<div id="div3">
  <div id="child2">mouseout method</div>
</div>

When the user moves their mouse out of each div, we will generate a random color and then change the background color of the div.

For the third div, we will use the mouseleave method to show how it differs from the mouseout method.

Here is the JavaScript code:

function genRandomColor() {
  var letters = '0123456789ABCDEF';
  var randomColor = '#';
  for (var i = 0; i < 6; i++) {
    randomColor += letters[Math.floor(Math.random() * 16)];
  }
  return randomColor;
}
$("#div1").mouseleave(function() {
  $('#div1').css("background-color", genRandomColor());
});
$("#div2").mouseleave(function() {
  $('#div2').css("background-color", genRandomColor());
});
$("#div3").mouseout(function() {
  $('#div3').css("background-color", genRandomColor());
});

The final code and output for this example of using the jQuery mouseleave() method is below:

Code Output:

Full Code:

<style>#div1, #div2, #div3 { float: left; height: 200px; width: 200px; border: 1px solid #444; margin-right: 20px; } #child1, #child2 { height: 100px; width: 100%; background: #ddd; display: flex; align-items: center; justify-content: center; padding: 5px; } .clear { clear: both; }</style>
<div id="div1">div1</div>
<div id="div2">
  <div id="child1">mouseleave method</div>
</div>
<div id="div3">
  <div id="child2">mouseout method</div>
</div>
<div class="clear"></div>

<script>

function genRandomColor() {
  var letters = '0123456789ABCDEF';
  var randomColor = '#';
  for (var i = 0; i < 6; i++) {
    randomColor += letters[Math.floor(Math.random() * 16)];
  }
  return randomColor;
}
$("#div1").mouseleave(function() {
  $('#div1').css("background-color", genRandomColor());
});
$("#div2").mouseleave(function() {
  $('#div2').css("background-color", genRandomColor());
});
$("#div3").mouseout(function() {
  $('#div3').css("background-color", genRandomColor());
});

</script>

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