.insertAfter()

Insert every element in the set of matched elements after the target.

.insertAfter(target)🡢 jQuery

target Selector, htmlString, Element, Array, jQueryA selector, element, array of elements, HTML string, or jQuery object; the matched set of elements will be inserted after the element(s) specified by this parameter.

The .after() and .insertAfter() methods perform the same task. The major difference is in the syntax—specifically, in the placement of the content and target. With .after(), the selector expression preceding the method is the container after which the content is inserted. With .insertAfter(), on the other hand, the content precedes the method, either as a selector expression or as markup created on the fly, and it is inserted after the target container.

Consider the following HTML:

<div class="container">
  <h2>Greetings</h2>
  <div class="inner">Hello</div>
  <div class="inner">Goodbye</div>
</div>

We can create content and insert it after several elements at once:

$("<p>Test</p>").insertAfter(".inner");

Each inner <div> element gets this new content:

<div class="container">
  <h2>Greetings</h2>
  <div class="inner">Hello</div>
  <p>Test</p>
  <div class="inner">Goodbye</div>
  <p>Test</p>
</div>

We can also select an element on the page and insert it after another:

$("h2").insertAfter($(".container"));

If an element selected this way is inserted into a single location elsewhere in the DOM, it will be moved after the target (not cloned) and a new set consisting of the inserted element is returned:

<div class="container">
  <div class="inner">Hello</div>
  <div class="inner">Goodbye</div>
</div>
<h2>Greetings</h2>

If there is more than one target element, however, cloned copies of the inserted element will be created for each target after the first, and that new set (the original element plus clones) is returned.

Before jQuery 1.9, the append-to-single-element case did not create a new set, but instead returned the original set which made it difficult to use the .end() method reliably when being used with an unknown number of elements.

Insert all paragraphs after an element with id of "foo". Same as $( "#foo" ).after( "p" )

JS
<p>is what I said...</p>
<div id="foo">FOO!</div>
CSS
#foo {
  background: yellow;
}
HTML
$("p").insertAfter("#foo");
DEMO

Looking for a Web Developer?

👋

Hi! I'm Basti, author of this site. If you are looking for a web developer with 15+ years of experience, holla at me!

Be it the good 'ol jQuery, vanilla JS or modern frameworks like Vue and Svelte, front- or backend, I can help you.

Just write me at jobs@jqapi.com :)