Web/CSS/scroll-margin

The scroll-margin shorthand property sets all of the scroll margins of an element at once, assigning values much like the margin property does for margins of an element.

The source for this interactive example is stored in a GitHub repository. If you'd like to contribute to the interactive examples project, please clone https://github.com/mdn/interactive-examples and send us a pull request.

Constituent properties

This property is a shorthand for the following CSS properties:

Syntax

/* <length> values */
scroll-margin: 10px;
scroll-margin: 1em .5em 1em 1em;

/* Global values */
scroll-margin: inherit;
scroll-margin: initial;
scroll-margin: unset;

Values

<length>: An outset from the corresponding edge of the scroll container.

Description

You can see the effect of scroll-margin by scrolling to a point partway between two of the "pages" of the example's content. The value specified for scroll-margin determines how much of the page that's primarily outside the snapport should remain visible.

Thus, the scroll-margin values represent outsets defining the scroll snap area that is used for snapping this box to the snapport. The scroll snap area is determined by taking the transformed border box, finding its rectangular bounding box (axis-aligned in the scroll container’s coordinate space), then adding the specified outsets.

Formal definition

Initial value	`0`
Applies to	all elements
Inherited	no
Computed value	as specified
Animation type	by computed value type

Formal syntax

<length>{1,4}

Examples

Simple demonstration

This example implements something very similar to the interactive example above, except that here we'll explain to you how it's implemented.

The aim here is to create four horizontally-scrolling blocks, the second and third of which snap into place, near but not quite at the left of each block.

HTML

The HTML that represents the blocks is very simple:

<div class="scroller">
  <div>1</div>
  <div>2</div>
  <div>3</div>
  <div>4</div>
</div>

CSS

Let's walk through the CSS. the outer container is styled like this:

.scroller {
  text-align: left;
  width: 250px;
  height: 250px;
  overflow-x: scroll;
  display: flex;
  box-sizing: border-box;
  border: 1px solid #000;
  scroll-snap-type: x mandatory;
}

The main parts relevant to the scroll snapping are overflow-x: scroll, which makes sure the contents will scroll and not be hidden, and scroll-snap-type: x mandatory, which dictates that scroll snapping must occur along the horizontal axis, and the scrolling will always come to rest on a snap point.

The child elements are styled as follows:

.scroller > div {
  flex: 0 0 250px;
  width: 250px;
  background-color: #663399;
  color: #fff;
  font-size: 30px;
  display: flex;
  align-items: center;
  justify-content: center;
  scroll-snap-align: start;
}

.scroller > div:nth-child(2n) {
  background-color: #fff;
  color: #663399;
}

The most relevant part here is scroll-snap-align: start, which specifies that the left-hand edges (the "starts" along the x axis, in our case) are the designated snap points.

Last of all we specify the scroll margin-values, a different one for the second and third child elements:

.scroller > div:nth-child(2) {
  scroll-margin: 1rem;
}

.scroller > div:nth-child(3) {
  scroll-margin: 2rem;
}

This means that when scrolling past the middle child elements, the scrolling will snap to 1rem outside the left edge of the second <div>, and 2rems outside the left edge of the third <div>.

Note: Here we are setting scroll-margin on all sides at once, but only the start edge is really relevant. It would work just as well here to only set a scroll margin on that one edge, for example with scroll-margin-inline-start: 1rem, or scroll-margin: 0 0 0 1rem.

Result

Try it for yourself:

Specifications

Specification	Status	Comment
CSS Scroll Snap Module Level 1The definition of 'scroll-margin' in that specification.	Candidate Recommendation	Initial definition

Browser compatibility

Update compatibility data on GitHub

	Desktop						Mobile
	Chrome	Edge	Firefox	Internet Explorer	Opera	Safari	Android webview	Chrome for Android	Firefox for Android	Opera for Android	Safari on iOS	Samsung Internet
`scroll-margin`	Chrome Full support 69	Edge Full support 79	Firefox Full support 68	IE No support No	Opera Full support 56	Safari Partial support 11 Notes' Alternate Name' Partial support 11 Notes' Alternate Name' Notes' Scroll margin is not applied for scrolls to fragment target or `scrollIntoView()`, see bug 189265. Alternate Name' Uses the non-standard name: `scroll-snap-margin`	WebView Android Full support 69	Chrome Android Full support 69	Firefox Android Full support 68	Opera Android Full support 48	Safari iOS Partial support 11 Notes' Alternate Name' Partial support 11 Notes' Alternate Name' Notes' Scroll margin is not applied for scrolls to fragment target or `scrollIntoView()`, see bug 189265. Alternate Name' Uses the non-standard name: `scroll-snap-margin`	Samsung Internet Android Full support 10.0

Legend

Full support: Full support
Partial support: Partial support
No support: No support
See implementation notes.': See implementation notes.
Uses a non-standard name.': Uses a non-standard name.

scroll-margin by Mozilla Contributors is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.5.