Tutorials

Angular 13 Material Select Dropdown with Search Input Field

In this tutorial, I will teach you how to make Angular Material Select/Dropdown with Search. We will use NgxMatSelectSearch Angular component. Basically, it provides an input field for searching/filtering MatSelect options of the Angular Material library.

Try it yourself

You can try the Angular 13 Material select/dropdown search input field widget online using the button given below. The complete TypeScript and HTML5 source code of this project is also given below.

Live Demo

Important Note: This project is meant as a temporary implementation of angular/components#5697. The goal is to have an implementation in the official Angular Material repository, once angular/components#7835 is merged.

How to use it?

Install ngx-mat-select-search in your project:

npm install ngx-mat-select-search

Import the NgxMatSelectSearchModule e.g. in your app.module.ts:

import { MatSelectModule } from '@angular/material';
import { NgxMatSelectSearchModule } from 'ngx-mat-select-search';

@NgModule({
  imports: [
    ...
    MatSelectModule,
    NgxMatSelectSearchModule
  ],
})
export class AppModule {}

Use the ngx-mat-select-search component inside a mat-select element by placing it inside a <mat-option> element:

<mat-form-field>
  <mat-select [formControl]="bankCtrl" placeholder="Bank" #singleSelect>
    <mat-option>
      <ngx-mat-select-search [formControl]="bankFilterCtrl"></ngx-mat-select-search>
    </mat-option>
    <mat-option *ngFor="let bank of filteredBanks | async" [value]="bank">
      {{bank.name}}
    </mat-option>
  </mat-select>
</mat-form-field>
<ngx-mat-select-search ngModel (ngModelChange)="filterMyOptions($event)">
<ngx-mat-select-search [formControl]="bankFilterCtrl" 
                       placeholderLabel="Find bank..." 
                       noEntriesFoundLabel="'no matching bank found'"></ngx-mat-select-search>

Compatibility

Current release

  • @angular/core: ^12.0.0 || ^13.0.0 || ^14.0.0
  • @angular/material: ^12.0.0 || ^13.0.0 || ^14.0.0

Version 3.3.3

  • @angular/core: ^8.0.0 || ^9.0.0 || ^10.0.0 || ^11.0.0 || ^12.0.0 || ^13.0.0
  • @angular/material: ^8.0.0 || ^9.0.0 || ^10.0.0 || ^11.0.0 || ^12.0.0 || ^13.0.0

Version 1.8.0

  • @angular/core: ^5.0.0 || ^6.0.0 || ^7.0.0 || ^8.0.0
  • @angular/material: ^5.0.0 || ^6.0.0 || ^7.0.0 || ^8.0.0

API

The MatSelectSearchComponent implements the ControlValueAccessor interface. Furthermore, it provides the following inputs:

Inputs

  /** Label of the search placeholder */  @Input() placeholderLabel = 'Suche';

  /** Type of the search input field */  @Input() type = 'text';

  /** Font-based icon used for displaying Close-Icon */  @Input() closeIcon = 'close';

  /** Svg-based icon used for displaying Close-Icon. If set, closeIcon is overridden */  @Input() closeSvgIcon?: string;

  /** Label to be shown when no entries are found. Set to null if no message should be shown. */  @Input() noEntriesFoundLabel = 'Keine Optionen gefunden';

  /**
    * Whether or not the search field should be cleared after the dropdown menu is closed.
    * Useful for server-side filtering. See [#3](https://github.com/bithost-gmbh/ngx-mat-select-search/issues/3)
    */  @Input() clearSearchInput = true;

  /** Whether to show the search-in-progress indicator */  @Input() searching = false;

  /** Disables initial focusing of the input field */  @Input() disableInitialFocus = false;

  /** Enable clear input on escape pressed */  @Input() enableClearOnEscapePressed = false;

  /**
   * Prevents home / end key being propagated to mat-select,
   * allowing to move the cursor within the search input instead of navigating the options
   */  @Input() preventHomeEndKeyPropagation = false;

  /** Disables scrolling to active options when option list changes. Useful for server-side search */  @Input() disableScrollToActiveOnOptionsChanged = false;

  /** Adds 508 screen reader support for search box */  @Input() ariaLabel = 'dropdown search';

  /** Whether to show Select All Checkbox (for mat-select[multi=true]) */  @Input() showToggleAllCheckbox = false;

  /** select all checkbox checked state */  @Input() toggleAllCheckboxChecked = false;

  /** select all checkbox indeterminate state */  @Input() toggleAllCheckboxIndeterminate = false;

  /** Display a message in a tooltip on the toggle-all checkbox */  @Input() toggleAllCheckboxTooltipMessage = '';

  /** Define the position of the tooltip on the toggle-all checkbox. */  @Input() toogleAllCheckboxTooltipPosition: 'left' | 'right' | 'above' | 'below' | 'before' | 'after' = 'below';

  /** Show/Hide the search clear button of the search input */  @Input() hideClearSearchButton = false;

  /** 
   * Always restore selected options on selectionChange for mode multi (e.g. for lazy loading/infinity scrolling). 
   * Defaults to false, so selected options are only restored while filtering is active. 
   */  @Input() alwaysRestoreSelectedOptionsMulti = false;

  /**
  *  Text that is appended to the currently active item label announced by screen readers, informing the user of the current index, value and total
  *  options.
  *  eg: Bank R (Germany) 1 of 6
  */  @Input() indexAndLengthScreenReaderText = ' of ';
  
  /** Output emitter to send to parent component with the toggle all boolean */  @Output() toggleAll = new EventEmitter<boolean>();

Conclusion

If you want to add a searchable select dropdown in your Angular app then the above source code will be very helpful. Basically, we used the NgxMatSelectSearch Angular component to seach/filter data inside a dropdown whereas for designing we used Google Material design library.

Furqan

Well. I've been working for the past three years as a web designer and developer. I have successfully created websites for small to medium sized companies as part of my freelance career. During that time I've also completed my bachelor's in Information Technology.

Recent Posts

MiniMax-M1 vs GPT-4o vs Claude 3 Opus vs LLaMA 3 Benchmarks

MiniMax-M1 is a new open-weight large language model (456 B parameters, ~46 B active) built with hybrid…

June 22, 2025

How to Use Husky with npm to Manage Git Hooks

Managing Git hooks manually can quickly become tedious and error-prone—especially in fast-moving JavaScript or Node.js…

June 22, 2025

How to Use Lefthook with npm to Manage Git Hooks

Git hooks help teams enforce code quality by automating checks at key stages like commits…

June 22, 2025

Lefthook vs Husky: Which Git Hooks Tool is Better? [2025]

Choosing the right Git hooks manager directly impacts code quality, developer experience, and CI/CD performance.…

June 22, 2025

Llama 3.1 vs GPT-4 Benchmarks

We evaluated the performance of Llama 3.1 vs GPT-4 models on over 150 benchmark datasets…

July 24, 2024

Transforming Manufacturing with Industrial IoT Solutions and Machine Learning

The manufacturing industry is undergoing a significant transformation with the advent of Industrial IoT Solutions.…

July 6, 2024