Question: I have such problem - I need to autofocus some element inside twitter bootstrap modal (after it shows). The tricky part is here - content of this modal is loaded using 'data-remote' (jQuery.load method) from separate HTML file, so

```
$(document).on('shown', ".modal", function() {
    $('[autofocus]', this).focus();
});

```

works only if modal was loaded before.   

The question is - how to make autofocus work at the first time modal loads?

Answer: 
I couldn't get @nc's solution working on my app. It didn't see modals that were added later. This worked for me though

```
$(document).on('shown.bs.modal', '.modal', function() {
  $(this).find('[autofocus]').focus();
});

```

As Frank Fang points out, you should use this if you are using a newer version of Bootstrap that doesn't rely on the `autofocus` HTML attribute.

```
$('#myModal').on('shown.bs.modal', function () {
  // get the locator for an input in your modal. Here I'm focusing on
  // the element with the id of myInput
  $('#myInput').focus()
})

```
Above answers are somewhat outdated for latest Bootstrap versions.
------------------------------------------------------------------

Below is excerpted from: <http://getbootstrap.com/javascript/#modals>

> 
> Due to how HTML5 defines its semantics, the `autofocus` HTML attribute
>  has no effect in Bootstrap modals. To achieve the same effect, use
>  some custom JavaScript:
> 
> 
> 
> ```
> $('#myModal').on('shown.bs.modal', function () {
>   $('#myInput').focus()
> })
> 
> ```
> 
>