How can I hide a checkbox in html?

Try setting the checkbox's opacity to 0. If you want the checkbox to be out of flow try position:absolute and offset the checkbox by a large number.

HTML

<label class="checkbox"><input type="checkbox" value="valueofcheckbox" checked="checked" style="opacity:0; position:absolute; left:9999px;">Option Text</label>

Elements that are not being rendered (be it through visibility: hidden, display: none, opacity: 0.0, whatever) will not indicate focus. The browser will not draw a focus border around nothing.

If you want the text to be focusable, that's completely doable. You can wrap the whole thing in an element that can receive focus (for example, a hyperlink), or allow another tag to have focus using the tabindex property:

<label tabindex="0" class="checkbox">
  <input type="checkbox" value="valueofcheckbox" style="display:none" checked="checked" />Option Text
</label>

Fiddle

In this case, the <label> tag above is actually receiving focus and everything within it will have a focus border when it's in focus.

I do question what your goal is. If you're using a hidden checkbox to internally track some sort of state, you might be better off using a <input type="hidden" /> tag instead.


This two classes are borrowed from the HTML Boilerplate main.css. Although the invisible checkbox will be focused and not the label.

/*
 * Hide only visually, but have it available for screenreaders: h5bp.com/v
 */

.visuallyhidden {
    border: 0;
    clip: rect(0 0 0 0);
    height: 1px;
    margin: -1px;
    overflow: hidden;
    padding: 0;
    position: absolute;
    width: 1px;
}

/*
 * Extends the .visuallyhidden class to allow the element to be focusable
 * when navigated to via the keyboard: h5bp.com/p
 */

.visuallyhidden.focusable:active,
.visuallyhidden.focusable:focus {
    clip: auto;
    height: auto;
    margin: 0;
    overflow: visible;
    position: static;
    width: auto;
}

input may have a hidden attribute:

label{ cursor:pointer; user-select:none; }
input:checked + span::before {
  content: 'un';
}
<label>
  <input type='checkbox' hidden/>
  <span>check</span>
<label>