CSS features reference

Discover new workflows in this comprehensive reference of Chrome DevTools features related to viewing and changing CSS.

See Get Started with Viewing and Changing CSS to learn the basics.

# Select an element

The Elements panel of DevTools lets you view or change the CSS of one element at a time. The selected element is highlighted blue in the DOM Tree. The element's styles are shown in the Styles pane. See View an element's CSS for a tutorial.

Figure 1. The h1 element that's highlighted blue in the DOM Tree is the selected element. To the right, the element's styles are shown in the Styles pane. To the left, the element is highlighted in the viewport, but only because the mouse is currently hovering over it in the DOM Tree

There are many ways to select an element:

• In your viewport, right-click the element and select Inspect.
• In DevTools, click Select an element or press Command+Shift+C (Mac) or Control+Shift+C (Windows, Linux), and then click the element in the viewport.
• In DevTools, click the element in the DOM Tree.
• In DevTools, run a query like document.querySelector('p') in the Console, right-click the result, and then select Reveal in Elements panel.

# View CSS

# View the external stylesheet where a rule is defined

In the Styles pane, click the link next to a CSS rule to open the external stylesheet that defines the rule.

If the stylesheet is minified, see Make a minified file readable.

Figure 2. Clicking devsite-google-blue.css:487 takes you to line 487 of devsite-google-blue.css, where the .devsite-article h1:first-of-type CSS rule is defined.

# View only the CSS that's actually applied to an element

The Styles tab shows you all of the rules that apply to an element, including declarations that have been overridden. When you're not interested in overridden declarations, use the Computed tab to view only the CSS that's actually being applied to an element.

1. Select an element.
2. Go to the Computed tab in the Elements panel.

Inherited properties are opaque. Check the Show All checkbox to see all inherited values.

Figure 3. The Computed tab shows the CSS properties being applied to the currently-selected h1 element

# View CSS properties in alphabetical order

Use the Computed tab. See View only the CSS that's actually applied to an element.

# View inherited CSS properties

Check the Show All checkbox in the Computed tab. See View only the CSS that's actually applied to an element.

Alternatively, scroll down the Styles pane and find sections named Inherited from <element_name>.

# View @supports at-rules

The Styles tab shows you the @supports CSS at-rules if they are applied to an element. For example, inspect the following element:

If your browser supports the lab() function, the element is green, otherwise it's purple.

# View an element's box model

To view the box model of an element, go to the Styles tab. If your DevTools window is narrow, the Box Model diagram is at the bottom of the tab.

To change a value, double-click on it.

Figure 4. The Box Model diagram in the Styles tab shows the box model for the currently selected h1 element

# Search and filter an element's CSS

Use the Filter text box on the Styles and Computed tabs to search for specific CSS properties or values.

To also search inherited properties in the Computed tab, check the Show All checkbox.

Figure 5. Filtering the Styles tab to only show rules that include the search query color

Figure 6. Filtering the Computed tab to only show declarations that include the search query 100%

# Toggle a pseudo-class

To toggle a pseudo-class like :active, :focus, :hover, :visited, :focus-within or focus-visible:

1. Select an element.
2. On the Elements panel, go to the Styles tab.
3. Click :hov.
4. Check the pseudo-class that you want to enable.

Figure 7. Toggling the :hover pseudo-class. In the viewport you can see that the background-color: cornflowerblue declaration is being applied to the element, even though the element is not actually being hovered over

See Add a pseudostate to a class for an interactive tutorial.

# View inherited highlight pseudo-elements

Pseudo-elements let you style specific parts of elements. Highlight pseudo-elements are document portions with a "selected" status and they are styled as "highlighted" to indicate this status to the user. For example, such pseudo-elements are ::selection, ::spelling-error, ::grammar-error, and ::highlight.

As mentioned in the specification, when multiple styles conflict, cascade determines the winning style.

To better understand the inheritance and priority of the rules, you can view the inherited highlight pseudo-elements:

1. Inspect the text below.

   I inherited the style of my parent's highlight pseudo-element. Select me!

2. Select a portion of the text above.

3. In the Styles pane, scroll down to find the Inherited from ::selection pseudo of... section.

# View cascade layers

Cascade layers enable more explicit control of your CSS files to prevent style-specificity conflicts. This is useful for large codebases, design systems, and when managing third-party styles in applications.

To view cascade layers, inspect the element below and open Elements > Styles.

In the Styles pane, view the 3 cascade layers and their styles: page, component and base.

To view the layer order, click the layer name or the Toggle CSS layers viewlayers button.

The page layer has the highest specificity, therefore the element's background is green.

# View a page in print mode

To view a page in print mode:

1. Open the Command Menu.
2. Start typing Rendering and select Show Rendering.
3. For the Emulate CSS Media dropdown, select print.

# View used and unused CSS with the Coverage tab

The Coverage tab shows you what CSS a page actually uses.

1. Press Command+Shift+P (Mac) or Control+Shift+P (Windows, Linux, ChromeOS) while DevTools is in focus to open the Command Menu.

2. Start typing coverage and select Show Coverage. The Coverage tab appears.

   

   Figure 8. Opening the Coverage tab from the Command Menu

   

   Figure 9. The Coverage tab

3. Click Start Instrumenting Coverage And Reload Page . The page reloads and the Coverage tab provides an overview of how much CSS (and JavaScript) is used from each file that the browser loads. Green represents used CSS. Red represents unused CSS.

   

   Figure 10. An overview of how much CSS (and JavaScript) is used and unused

4. Click a CSS file to see a line-by-line breakdown of what CSS it uses.

   

   Figure 11. Lines 55 to 57 and 65 to 67 of devsite-google-blue.css are unused, whereas lines 59 to 63 are used

# Force print preview mode

See Force DevTools Into Print Preview Mode.

# Change CSS

# Add a CSS declaration to an element

Since the order of declarations affects how an element is styled, you can add declarations in different ways:

• Add a inline declaration. Equivalent to adding a style attribute to the element's HTML.
• Add a declaration to a style rule.

What workflow should you use? For most scenarios, you probably want to use the inline declaration workflow. Inline declarations have higher specificity than external ones, so the inline workflow ensures that the changes take effect in the element as you'd expect. See Selector Types for more on specificity.

If you're debugging an element's styles and you need to specifically test what happens when a declaration is defined in different places, use the other workflow.

# Add an inline declaration

To add an inline declaration:

1. Select an element.
2. In the Styles pane, click between the brackets of the element.style section. The cursor focuses, allowing you to enter text.
3. Enter a property name and press Enter.
4. Enter a valid value for that property and press Enter. In the DOM Tree, you can see that a style attribute has been added to the element.

Figure 12. The margin-top and background-color properties have been applied to the selected element. In the DOM Tree you can see the declarations reflected in the element's style attribute

# Add a declaration to a style rule

To add a declaration to an existing style rule:

1. Select an element.
2. In the Styles pane, click between the brackets of the style rule to which you want to add the declaration. The cursor focuses, allowing you to enter text.
3. Enter a property name and press Enter.
4. Enter a valid value for that property and press Enter.

Figure 13. Adding the border-bottom-style:groove declaration to a style rule

# Change a declaration name or value

Double-click a declaration's name or value to change it. See Change declaration values with keyboard shortcuts for shortcuts for quickly incrementing or decrementing a value by 0.1, 1, 10, or 100 units.

# Change declaration values with keyboard shortcuts

While editing the value of a declaration, you can use the following keyboard shortcuts to increment the value by a fixed amount:

• Option+Up (Mac) or Alt+Up (Windows, Linux) to increment by 0.1.
• Up to change the value by 1, or by 0.1 if the current value is between -1 and 1.
• Shift+Up to increment by 10.
• Shift+Command+Up (Mac) or Control+Shift+Page Up (Windows, Linux) to increment the value by 100.

Decrementing also works. Just replace each instance of Up mentioned above with Down.

# Add a class to an element

To add a class to an element:

1. Select the element in the DOM Tree.
2. Click .cls.
3. Enter the name of the class in the Add New Class text box.
4. Press Enter.

Figure 14. The Element Classes pane

# Emulate light and dark theme preferences and enable automatic dark mode

To toggle automatic dark mode or emulate the user's preference of light or dark themes:

1. On the Elements > Styles pane, click Toggle common rendering emulations.

2. Select one of the following from the drop-down list:

   • prefers-color-scheme: light. Indicates that the user prefers the light theme.
   • prefers-color-scheme: dark. Indicates that the user prefers the dark theme.
   • Automatic dark mode. Displays your page in dark mode even if you didn't implement it. Additionally, sets prefers-color-scheme to dark automatically.

This drop-down is a shortcut for Emulate CSS media feature prefers-color-scheme and Enable automatic dark mode options of the Rendering tab.

# Toggle a class

To enable or disable a class on an element:

1. Select the element in the DOM Tree.
2. Open the Element Classes pane. See Add a class to an element. Below the Add New Class text box are all of the classes that are being applied to this element.
3. Toggle the checkbox next to the class that you want to enable or disable.

# Add a style rule

To add a new style rule:

1. Select an element.
2. Click New Style Rule . DevTools inserts a new rule beneath the element.style rule.

Figure 15. DevTools adds the h1.devsite-page-title style rule after clicking New Style Rule

# Choose which stylesheet to add a rule to

When adding a new style rule, click and hold New Style Rule to choose which stylesheet to add the style rule to.

Figure 16. Choosing a stylesheet

# Toggle a declaration

To toggle a single declaration on or off:

1. Select an element.
2. In the Styles pane, hover over the rule that defines the declaration. Checkboxes appear next to each declaration.
3. Check or uncheck the checkbox next to the declaration. When you uncheck a declaration, DevTools crosses it out to indicate that it's no longer active.

Figure 20. The color property for the currently-selected element has been toggled off

# Change colors with the Color Picker

The Color Picker provides a GUI for changing color and background-color declarations.

To open the Color Picker:

1. Select an element.

2. In the Styles tab, find the color or background-color declaration that you want to change. To the left of the color or background-color value, there is a small square which is a preview of the color.

   

   Figure 24. The small blue square to the left of rgb(123, 170, 247) is a preview of that color

3. Click the preview to open the Color Picker.

   

   Figure 25. The Color Picker

Here's a description of each of the UI elements of the Color Picker:

Figure 26. The Color Picker, annotated

1. Shades.

2. Eyedropper. See Sample a color off the page with the Eyedropper.

3. Copy To Clipboard. Copy the Display Value to your clipboard.

4. Display Value. The RGBA, HSLA, HWBA, or Hex representation of the color.

5. Color Palette. Click one of these squares to change the color to that square.

6. Hue.

7. Opacity.

8. Display Value Switcher. Toggle between the RGBA, HSLA, HWBA, and Hex representations of the current color.

   Note: Alternatively, to toggle between color representations, hold down Shift and click on the color preview button.

9. Color Palette Switcher. Toggle between the Material Design palette, a custom palette, or a page colors palette. DevTools generates the page color palette based on the colors that it finds in your stylesheets.

# Sample a color (anywhere) with the Eyedropper

When you open the Color Picker, the Eyedropper is on by default.

The Eyedropper can sample colors both from the page and, with a corresponding experiment enabled, from anywhere on the screen:

• Pick a color from the page:

  1. Hover over the target color in the viewport.

  2. Click to confirm.

     

  The Color Picker shows a current color value of #212121, which is close to black. This color changes to the blue that's highlighted in the viewport once you click the blue.

• (Experimental) Pick a color from anywhere on the screen:

  To enable this experimental feature, check Enable color picking outside the browser window under Settings > Experiments and reload DevTools.

  1. Hover over the target color on your screen.

  2. Click to confirm.

     

  The Color Picker shows a current color value of rgb(224 255 255 / 15%). This color changes to the pink from outside the browser window once you click the pink.

# Change angle value with the Angle Clock

The Angle Clock provides a GUI for changing <angle>s in CSS property values.

To open the Angle Clock:

1. Select an element with angle declaration. For example, select the text below.

2. In the Styles tab, find the transform or background declaration that you want to change. Click on the Angle Preview box next to the angle value.

   

   Figure 28. The small clock to the left of -5deg and 0.25turn are preview of the angle.

3. Click the preview to open the Angle Clock.

   

   Figure 29. The Angle Clock.

4. Change the angle value by clicking on the Angle Clock circle or scroll your mouse to increase / decrease the angle value by 1.

5. There are more keyboard shortcuts to change the angle value. Find out more in the Styles pane keyboard shortcuts.

# Change box and text shadows with the Shadow Editor

The Shadow Editor provides a GUI for changing text-shadow and box-shadow CSS declarations.

To open the Shadow Editor:

1. Select an element with a shadow declaration. For example, select the element below.

2. In the Styles tab, find a shadow icon next to the text-shadow or box-shadow declaration.

   

   Figure 29. The shadow icon to the left of the text-shadow and box-shadow values.

3. Click the shadow icon to open the Shadow editor.

   

4. Change the shadow properties:

   • Type (only for box-shadow). Pick Outset or Inset.
   • X and Y offsets. Drag the blue dot or specify values.
   • Blur. Drag the slider or specify a value.
   • Spread (only for box-shadow). Drag the slider or specify a value.

5. Observe the changes applied to the element.

# (Experimental) Copy CSS changes

With this experiment enabled, the Styles pane highlights your CSS changes in green.

To copy a single CSS declaration change, hover over the highlighted declaration and click the Copy button.

To copy all CSS changes across declarations at once, right-click on any declaration and select Copy all CSS changes.

Additionally, you can track changes you make with the Changes tab.