Web/CSS/unset

The unset CSS keyword resets a property to its inherited value if the property naturally inherits from its parent, and to its initial value if not. In other words, it behaves like the inherit keyword in the first case, when the property is an inherited property, and like the initial keyword in the second case, when the property is a non-inherited property.

unset can be applied to any CSS property, including the CSS shorthand all.

Examples

Color

HTML

<p>This text is red.</p>
<div class="foo">
  <p>This text is also red.</p>
</div>
<div class="bar">
  <p>This text is green (default inherited value).</p>
</div>

CSS

.foo {
  color: blue;
}
.bar {
  color: green;
}

p {
  color: red;
}
.bar p {
  color: unset;
}

Border

HTML

<p>This text has a red border.</p>
<div>
  <p>This text has a red border.</p>
</div>
<div class="bar">
  <p>This text has a black border (initial default, not inherited).</p>
</div>

CSS

div {
  border: 1px solid green;
}

p {
  border: 1px solid red;
}

.bar p {
  border-color: unset;
}

Specifications

Specification	Status	Comment
CSS Cascading and Inheritance Level 4The definition of 'unset' in that specification.	Candidate Recommendation	No changes from Level 3.
CSS Cascading and Inheritance Level 3The definition of 'unset' in that specification.	Candidate Recommendation	Initial definition.

Browser compatibility

The compatibility table on this page is generated from structured data. If you'd like to contribute to the data, please check out https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data and send us a pull request.

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
unset	Chrome Full support 41	Edge Full support 13	Firefox Full support 27	IE No support No	Opera Full support 28	Safari Full support 9.1	WebView Android Full support 41	Chrome Android Full support 41	Firefox Android Full support 27	Opera Android Full support 28	Safari iOS Full support 9.3	Samsung Internet Android Full support 4.0

Legend

Full support  

Full support

No support  

No support

See also

• Use initial to set a property to its initial value.
• Use revert to reset a property to the value established by the user-agent stylesheet (or by user styles, if any exist).
• Use inherit to make an element's property the same as its parent.
• The all property lets you reset all properties to their initial, inherited, reverted, or unset state at once.

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