How to Remove a File from a JavaScript FileList?

Published on2022-12-31

Sometimes, we want to remove a file from a JavaScript FileList object.

In this article, we’ll look at how to remove a file from a JavaScript FileList object.

Use the Spread Operator

One way to remove a file from a JavaScript FileList is to use the spread operator to convert the FileList to an array.

Then we can call splice to remove the file we want.

For instance, we can write the following HTML:

<input type="file" multiple id="files" />

We add multiple to let select multiple files.

Then we can remove one of the items selected by writing:

const input = document.getElementById('files')
input.addEventListener('change', () => {
  const fileListArr = \[...input.files]
  fileListArr.splice(1, 1)
  console.log(fileListArr)
})

We get the file input element with getElementById .

We spread input.files into an array.

Then we call splice on the array with index 1 as the first argument and we specify that we remove 1 item with the 2nd arguemnt.

Therefore, fileListArr has the 1st and 3rd file listed.

Use the Array.from Method

We can replace the spread operator with the Array.from method.

For instance, we can write:

<input type="file" multiple id="files" />

And:

const input = document.getElementById("files");
input.addEventListener("change", () => {
  const fileListArr = Array.from(input.files);
  fileListArr.splice(1, 1);
  console.log(fileListArr);
});