unprefix the `-webkit-user-select` CSS property

[o-t-w]

Description

The user-select CSS property still needs a -webkit- prefix in Safari.

A note about the current state of CSS vendor prefix’s

• Chrome, Edge and other Chromium-based browsers had required a -webkit- prefix for print-color-adjust. This is no longer the case as of version 136.
• As part of Interop 2025, Safari removed the need for the -webkit- prefix for the text-decoration CSS shorthand property.

That leaves only a handful of properties requiring a prefix:

• user-select
• stretch: Implemented as -webkit-fill-available in WebKit and -moz-available in Firefox.
• text-size-adjust: Needs -webkit- prefix in WebKit and Firefox. (Firefox also supports the -moz- prefix.)
• box-decoration-break: Needs -webkit- prefix in WebKit.
• line-clamp: Needs a -webkit- prefix and some additional non-standard properties (display: -webkit-box and -webkit-box-orient: vertical) to be set in Chromium, WebKit and Firefox.

Autoprefixer is downloaded from NPM 33 million times per week. Needing to complicate build tooling with Autoprefixer for such a tiny handful of properties is an unfortunate situation.

Of those properties that do require a prefix, some are pretty niche, but that can’t be said for user-select. While line-clamp is another very useful and popular CSS feature that requires a prefix, Autoprefixer doesn’t prefix line-clamp, so it is primarily user-select that necessitates continued use of Autoprefixer). While ideally no property would require a prefix, for the reason just stated user-select in particular should be prioritised.

Specification

https://www.w3.org/TR/css-ui-4/#content-selection

web-feature

https://web-platform-dx.github.io/web-features-explorer/features/user-select/

Test Links

https://wpt.fyi/results/css/css-ui?label=master&label=experimental&aligned&q=user-select

Additional Signals

WebKit issue
Unmerged PR
various open bugs.

[github-actions]

This comment was automatically generated based on the information you provided. Please don't edit it.

Below is additional information about the web feature (from the web-features project) which is referenced in your proposal.
If this doesn't accurately correspond to your proposal, please update your initial comment to include web-features: <feature-id>.
To find feature IDs, use the web-features explorer.

Feature user-select

• ID: user-select
• Name: user-select
• Description: The user-select CSS property controls which elements can be selected by the user.
• Baseline status: Limited Availability
• Docs: user-select
• WPT tests: wpt.fyi/results/?q=feature:user-select
• More information: See the web-features explorer

[foolip]

@o-t-w thank for submitting this proposal! I took the liberty of editing your description to link https://web-platform-dx.github.io/web-features-explorer/features/user-select/, in order to help the bot (above) pick out the right feature for this.