# Developer Guide: Initializing Angular: Manual Initialization

In the vast majority of cases you'll want to let Angular handle initialization automatically. If, however, you need to delay Angular from managing the page right after the DOMContentLoaded event fires, you'll need to control this initialization manually.

To initialize Angular -- after you've done your own special-purpose initialization -- just call the `bootstrap()` function with the HTML container node that you want Angular to manage. In automatic initialization you'd do this by adding the `ngApp` attribute to the same node. Now, you won't use `ngApp` anywhere in your document.

To show the contrast of manual vs. automatic initialization, this automatic method:

    <!doctype html>
    <html ng-app>
    <head>
      <script src="http://code.angularjs.org/angular.js"></script>
    ...
    </pre

    is the same as this manual method:

    <pre>
    <!doctype html>
    <html>
    <head>
      <script src="http://code.angularjs.org/angular.js"></script>
      <script>
         angular.element(document).ready(function() {
           angular.bootstrap(document);
         });
      </script>
    </head>
    ...

### Related Topics

- Initializing Angular
- Automatic Initialization
- Angular HTML compiler

### Related API

`Compiler API`