You might think that making a div element the same height as your browser would be as easy as this:
div {
height: 100%;
}
However, it is unfortunately not. If you're wondering why height: 100%; doesn't work to make an element the full height of the screen, it's because a height has to be defined to use percentages in CSS. Since body tags have no predefined heights, CSS doesn't know what 100% means here. So the div element doesn't become 100% of the browser's height.
How to make a div the same height as the window
Making a div the same height as your browser window is relatively straight forward, and it starts with understanding a unit called vh. vh, which stands for viewport height, is a unit representing the current height of your browser window. 100vh is the full height, and any number less than that is a percentage of that height.
Instead of writing height: 100%, we can apply height: 100vh to any element to make it the same size as the browser window.
div {
height: 100vh
}
It also works for 100vw, which represents the full width of the browser window, vw standing for viewport width.
Top comments (4)
Working with
vhcan be tricky on mobile devices. The browser UI pops in and out, changing the usable viewport height, while 100vh stays the same. Depending on how you define 'browser window',svh,lvhanddvhor even a mix of those withclamp()might be a better solution.The same goes for
vwand scrollbars, by the way. A use case for that would be Safari, which displays a solid scrollbar when a mouse is connected, and a self-collapsing one with touchpads.you are right, on mobile it's confusing with collapsing navigation items. Kind of dumb it doesn't solve itself automatically.
You mean vw stands for viewport width and vh for viewport height.
While Viewport = the browser window size.
true my bad typo.