Is there a CSS selector for elements containing certain text?

Looks like they were thinking about it for the CSS3 spec but it didn't make the cut.

:contains() CSS3 selector http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-selectors/#content-selectors

As of Jan 2021, there IS something that will do just this. :has() ... only one catch: this is not supported in any browser yet

Example: The following selector matches only elements that directly contain an child:

a:has(> img)

References:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/:has

https://caniuse.com/?search=has

If you're using Chimp / Webdriver.io, they support a lot more CSS selectors than the CSS spec.

This, for example, will click on the first anchor that contains the words "Bad bear":

browser.click("a*=Bad Bear");

If you don't create the DOM yourself (e.g. in a userscript) you can do the following with pure JS:

for ( td of document.querySelectorAll('td') ) {
  console.debug("text:", td, td.innerText)
  td.setAttribute('text', td.innerText)
}
for ( td of document.querySelectorAll('td[text="male"]') )
  console.debug("male:", td, td.innerText)

<table>
  <tr>
    <td>Peter</td>
    <td>male</td>
    <td>34</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Susanne</td>
    <td>female</td>
    <td>12</td>
  </tr>
</table>

Console output

text: <td> Peter
text: <td> male
text: <td> 34
text: <td> Susanne
text: <td> female
text: <td> 12
male: <td text="male"> male

Excellent answers all around, but I think I can add something that worked for me in a practical scenario: exploiting the aria-label attribute for CSS.

For the readers that don't know: aria-label is an attribute that is used in conjunction with other similar attributes to let a screen-reader know what something is, in case someone with a visual impairment is using your website. Many websites add these attributes to elements with images or text in them, as "descriptors".

This makes it highly website-specific, but in case your element contains this, it's fairly simple to select that element using the content of the attribute:

HTML:

<td aria-label="male">Male</td>
<td aria-label="female">Female</td>

CSS:

td[aria-label="male"] {
    outline: 1px dotted green;
}

This is technically the same thing as using the data-attribute solution, but this will work for you if you are not the author of the website, plus this is not some out-of-the-way solution that is specifically designed to support this use case; it's fairly common on its own. The one downside of it is that there's really no guarantee that your intended element will have this attribute present.

If you want to apply style to the content you want. Easy trick.

    td { border: 1px solid black; }
    td:empty { background: lime; }
    td:empty::after { content: "male"; }

    <table>
      <tr>
        <td>Peter</td>
        <td><!--male--></td>
        <td>34</td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td>Susanne</td>
        <td>female</td>
        <td>14</td>
      </tr>
    </table>

https://jsfiddle.net/hyda8kqz/

I find the attribute option to be your best bet if you don't want to use javascript or jquery.

E.g to style all table cells with the word ready, In HTML do this:

 <td status*="ready">Ready</td>

Then in css:

td[status*="ready"] {
        color: red;
    }

Doing small Filter Widgets like this:

    var searchField = document.querySelector('HOWEVER_YOU_MAY_FIND_IT')
    var faqEntries = document.querySelectorAll('WRAPPING_ELEMENT .entry')

    searchField.addEventListener('keyup', function (evt) {
        var testValue = evt.target.value.toLocaleLowerCase();
        var regExp = RegExp(testValue);

        faqEntries.forEach(function (entry) {
            var text = entry.textContent.toLocaleLowerCase();

            entry.classList.remove('show', 'hide');

            if (regExp.test(text)) {
                entry.classList.add('show')
            } else {
                entry.classList.add('hide')
            }
        })
    })

The syntax of this question looks like Robot Framework syntax. In this case, although there is no css selector that you can use for contains, there is a SeleniumLibrary keyword that you can use instead. The Wait Until Element Contains.

Example:

Wait Until Element Contains  | ${element} | ${contains}
Wait Until Element Contains  |  td | male