Glassmorphism with Tailwind CSS Under 60 seconds

Glassmorphism is an ongoing trend right now in User interfaces. The new macOS, Big Sur brings a lot of it into the OS, and Microsoft has it for years with Aero UI, then later FluentUI.

To recreate this effect on the web, we only need a few css properties, but what if we want to use Tailwind?

Tailwind 2.1 Update

Tailwind 2.1 introduced first-party support of background-blur utility, so I'm back with a revision of this post.

The only classes you need to apply to your element right now:
bg-clip-padding backdrop-filter backdrop-blur-xl bg-opacity-60 border border-gray-200

Here's the Play link for the updated code

Original article:

(Only read this if you are curious about how it worked before Tailwind 2.1)
If you prefer a quick 1 min video:

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This article originally posted on Davidlevai.com blog.

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We need these utility classes: bg-opacity-{xy}, bg-clip-padding, bg-{color}. We can add a little border and shadow to look better with these: border border-{color}, shadow-{size}.

And to completely recreate the effect, we should blur the background. We've got 2 options here:

1. Inline styles

Add a style property to the card div: style="backdrop-filter: blur(20px);".

You can access the full code here

2. Extend Tailwind

We can use Tailwindcss-filters to extend it and use backdrop-filter as a utility class.

Just yarn add tailwindcss-filters, then extend your tailwind.config file:

// tailwind.config.js
module.exports = {
  theme: {
    backdropFilter: {
      'none': 'none',
      'blur': 'blur(20px)',
    },
  },
  plugins: [
    require('tailwindcss-filters'),
  ],
};

And now you can use the backdrop-filter-blur utility class on your HTML.

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Do you have any other quick & easy solutions to common things with Tailwind?

Comments

[Arnab Paryali]

I am in using tailwind css version ^2.1.1 and I didn't have to extend anything

<div className="bg-opacity-25 backdrop-filter backdrop-blur-lg">
....
</div>

[David]

Yes Arnab, you're right. Tailwind 2.1 introduced first-party support of background-blur utility. So I updated the article with the new information.

[Ostap Brehin]

Woow. It's really cool. Thanks for sharing!