Using CSS variables in Bootstrap

@mdo May 16, 2022

Bootstrap v5.2.0-beta1 added a slew of CSS custom properties, or CSS variables, across the :root level and all our core components. Here’s a quick look at how you can utilize them in your projects.

With CSS variables, you can now customize Bootstrap easier than ever, and without the need for a CSS preprocessor. All the power of Sass is still there behind the scenes, but CSS variables adds a ton of power for the future. Use and compose new values, updates styles globally without recompiling, set fallback values, setup new color modes, and more.

Let’s dig in.

CSS variables?

Their official name is custom properties, but they’re often referred to as CSS variables thanks to their most immediate use case for setting specific values. Consider reading the MDN CSS custom properties article or the CSS Tricks guide if you need a primer.

In a nutshell, CSS variables allow you to name frequently used values. For example, instead of writing #6f42c1 everywhere, you can set --purple: #6f42c1. Then you can use that variable later on with the var() function.

:root {
  --purple: #6f42c1;
}
.custom-element {
  color: var(--purple);
}

We use CSS variables in Bootstrap to set many property values globally, across our components, and in some of our utilities.

Groups of variables

When we talk about CSS variables in Bootstrap, we’re referring to three major groups:

  • Root variables — Globally scoped variables available on the :root element (<html> usually) and accessible by any element throughout the DOM.

  • Component variables — Variables scoped specifically to each component, usually on the component’s base class, and their modifier classes and Sass mixins.

  • Utility variables — Used as modifiers within other utility classes.

Regardless of where they are, all of our CSS variables are prefixed with --bs-, so you know where they’re coming from and how they might be used across codebases that mix Bootstrap’s CSS with additional custom styles. You’ll also notice that we don’t put all our component variables at the root level. This keeps CSS variables scoped to their intended use cases and prevents polluted variables in the global :root scope.

It’s also worth mentioning two larger efforts that are still to come around CSS variables:

  1. Adding CSS variables to all our forms
  2. Adding more nuanced global theme variables and support for color modes like dark mode.

These are likely coming in v5.3.0 (our next minor release after v5.2.0 stabilizes), so in the mean time, check out the GitHub repo to see how things are shaping up.

Root variables

Root variables in web inspector

Bootstrap has a ton of root variables and we’ll only be adding more in future updates for the aforementioned color mode support. As of this post, we have the following CSS variables on the :root element:

  • Colors — All named colors, gray colors, and theme colors. This also includes all our $theme-colors in their rgb format.

  • Body font styles — Everything from font-size to color and more, all applied to our <body> element.

  • Shared properties — For property-value pairings that we consider theme specific, like link colors and border styles.

Root CSS variables are used extensively across other parts of Bootstrap to allow you to easily override our default styles at a global level. For example, if you wanted to adjust the default border-radius and link color for our components, you could override a couple variables instead of writing new selectors.

// custom.css
:root {
  --bs-border-radius: .5rem;
  --bs-link-color: #333;
}

You can even use other root variables to override those values:

// custom.css
:root {
  --bs-border-radius: var(--bs-border-radius-lg);
  --bs-link-color: var(--bs-gray-800);
}

Without CSS variables, you’d have to use a preprocessor like Sass or write new selectors for every instance of these properties across all components. The former is relatively easy, the latter not so much. CSS variables help solve that.

Component variables

On our components, CSS variables get even more power for customizing. Nearly everything under the Components section in our docs sidebar now has CSS variables available to you:

Scrollspy and close button have no relevant CSS variables, so they’re excluded here.

Throughout our documentation you’ll find examples of customizing our default components by overriding their CSS variables. One great example comes from our own docs where we write our own button styles to create a purple button.

.btn-bd-primary {
  --bs-btn-font-weight: 600;
  --bs-btn-color: var(--bs-white);
  --bs-btn-bg: var(--bd-violet);
  --bs-btn-border-color: var(--bd-violet);
  --bs-btn-border-radius: .5rem;
  --bs-btn-hover-color: var(--bs-white);
  --bs-btn-hover-bg: #{shade-color($bd-violet, 10%)};
  --bs-btn-hover-border-color: #{shade-color($bd-violet, 10%)};
  --bs-btn-focus-shadow-rgb: var(--bd-violet-rgb);
  --bs-btn-active-color: var(--bs-btn-hover-color);
  --bs-btn-active-bg: #{shade-color($bd-violet, 20%)};
  --bs-btn-active-border-color: #{shade-color($bd-violet, 20%)};
}

Which looks like this:

Custom Bootstrap docs button

Another great example is from our tooltips. You can add custom classes to tooltips and popovers in Bootstrap with data-bs-custom-class="custom-tooltip". Then, with one CSS variable, you can change the tooltip background and arrow color.

.custom-tooltip {
  --bs-tooltip-bg: var(--bs-primary);
}

Which looks like this:

Custom tooltip

There are dozens of CSS variables in play across our components. All of them are referenced in a new section on the relevant docs page. For example, here are our modal CSS variables. This is in addition to all the Sass variables, mixins, loops, and maps used for each component.

Utility variables

Not every utility class uses CSS variables, but the ones that do gain a good amount of power and customization. Background, border, and color utilities all have what we call “local CSS variables” to improve their usefulness. Each of them uses CSS variables to customize the alpha transparency value of rgba() colors.

Consider our background color utilities, .bg-*. By default each utility class has a local variable, --bs-bg-opacity with a default value of 1. To change the background utility alpha value, you can override that value with your own styles, or some new .bg-opacity-* utilities.

<div class="p-3 bg-success bg-opacity-25">
  ...
</div>

Here’s how .bg-success looks with all our .bg-opacity-* classes applied:

Background opacity examples

And the same is available for border color opacity (--bs-border-opacity and .border-opacity-*) and text color opacity (--bs-text-opacity and .text-opacity-*). So many color options are now available with these utilities.

By default, we ship with five values for these various opacity utilities.

Class names Alpha value
.text-opacity-10
.bg-opacity-10
.border-opacity-10
.1
.text-opacity-25
.bg-opacity-25
.border-opacity-25
.25
.text-opacity-50
.bg-opacity-50
.border-opacity-50
.5
.text-opacity-75
.bg-opacity-75
.border-opacity-75
.75
.text-opacity-100
.bg-opacity-100
.border-opacity-100
1

Expect more CSS variables to make their way into our utilities. There’s a lot of power in real-time customization, even for what we consider immutable styles.


Ready to get started with Bootstrap? Checkout the quick start guide so you can put these new CSS variables to work in your next project!

Bootstrap Icons v1.8.2

@mdo May 13, 2022

Bootstrap Icons v1.8.2 has arrived with some bug fixes and a refreshed docs design to match our main project.

Here’s a quick rundown on the icon fixes:

  • Fix cutoff bank icon
  • Fix house-heart and house-heart-fill fill-rules
  • Fix corners of pentagon icons to match other shapes
  • Fix fill-rule for x-lg
  • Fix cutoff tool icon

On the CSS side, we’ve also added font-display: block to help address our icon font affecting Google Lighthouse scores.

Looking for more new icons? Head to the issue tracker to check for open requests or submit a new one.

Install

To get started, install or update via npm:

npm i bootstrap-icons

Or Composer:

composer require twbs/bootstrap-icons

You can also download the release from GitHub, or download just the SVGs and fonts (without the rest of the repository files).

Figma

The Figma file is now published to the Figma Community! It’s the same Bootstrap Icons Figma file you’ve seen from previous releases, just a little more accessible to those using the app.

Bootstrap 5.2.0 beta

@mdo May 13, 2022

It’s the biggest release since v5 itself—Bootstrap v5.2.0-beta1 is here! This release features redesigned docs, CSS variables for all our components, responsive offcanvas, new helpers and utilities, refined buttons and inputs, and lots of improvements under the hood.

Given the size of the update and time since our last release, we’re doing something different and shipping it as a beta first. Keep reading for details.

Why so long?

I want to start by acknowledging the time it’s taken to ship a new release. As an open source maintainer, I’m constantly worried about not doing or being good enough of a developer for my projects. Pair that with a distributed team all working through this pandemic and me having a heart attack, we’ve all needed some down time. I managed to put together a Bootstrap Icons release with what energy I had before needing another break. The rest of the team has also needed some well deserved down time.

I ask that you all please take some time to send some appreciation and support to your favorite open source maintainers. Everyone could use a little more love in this work.

All that said, we’re shipping v5.2.0-beta1 first since it’s been so long—we’d love your help testing things out. We’ll follow up with a stable release as soon as possible.

Okay, now onto the good parts!

Redesigned docs

Another release, another docs refresh! From the get go, you’ll notice our Bootstrap Purple™ is much more vibrant now, making everything feel brand new. We’ve rewritten our entire homepage to better show off all the awesome features of Bootstrap.

New homepage

See the homepage in action and let us know what you think!

New docs page

Stepping into the actual docs, you’ll notice quite a few changes. We’ve streamlined our navbar, done away with our subnav, and changed the sidebar to always show every page link for greater discoverability. Show above is also our refreshed quick start guide, which is now a step-by-step instructional guide for using Bootstrap via CDN.

Docs version picker

The refreshed navbar also has a long-awaited new version picker for v5.2.0 and beyond. From any page, click the version and see options to navigate to previous minor releases of that same page. When a page doesn’t exist in an older release, you’ll see a disabled version in the dropdown. We currently have no plans to link pages across major versions.

New search

The docs search is now powered by the latest version of Algolia’s DocSearch, bringing an improved design that even shows your most recent searches.

Design tweaks

To coincide with our docs redesign, we’ve given our buttons and inputs a slight refresh with some refined border-radius values. It’s a small change, but a welcomed refresh to keep things modern and fresh. Here’s a look at the before and after of our buttons:

Updated buttons

And the before and after of our inputs:

Updated inputs

Component CSS variables

With this release, all our components now include CSS variables to enable real-time customization, easier theming, and (soon) color mode support starting with dark mode. Every component page has been updated to include a reference guide of the relevant CSS variables. Take for example our buttons:

--#{$prefix}btn-padding-x: #{$btn-padding-x};
--#{$prefix}btn-padding-y: #{$btn-padding-y};
--#{$prefix}btn-font-family: #{$btn-font-family};
@include rfs($btn-font-size, --#{$prefix}btn-font-size);
--#{$prefix}btn-font-weight: #{$btn-font-weight};
--#{$prefix}btn-line-height: #{$btn-line-height};
--#{$prefix}btn-color: #{$body-color};
--#{$prefix}btn-bg: transparent;
--#{$prefix}btn-border-width: #{$btn-border-width};
--#{$prefix}btn-border-color: transparent;
--#{$prefix}btn-border-radius: #{$btn-border-radius};
--#{$prefix}btn-box-shadow: #{$btn-box-shadow};
--#{$prefix}btn-disabled-opacity: #{$btn-disabled-opacity};
--#{$prefix}btn-focus-box-shadow: 0 0 0 #{$btn-focus-width} rgba(var(--#{$prefix}btn-focus-shadow-rgb), .5);

Values for virtually every CSS variables are assigned via Sass variable, so customization via CSS and Sass are both well supported. Also included for several components are examples of customizing via CSS variables.

Custom button

Check out all our components to see how you can customize them to your liking.

New _maps.scss

Bootstrap v5.2.0-beta1 introduces a new Sass file with _maps.scss that pulls out several Sass maps from _variables.scss to fix an issue where updates to an original map were not applied to secondary maps that extend it. It’s not ideal, but it resolves a longstanding issue for folks when working with customized maps.

For example, updates to $theme-colors were not being applied to other maps that relied on $theme-colors (like the $utilities-colors and more), which created broken customization workflows. To summarize the problem, Sass has a limitation where once a default variable or map has been used, it cannot be updated. There’s a similar shortcoming with CSS variables when they’re used to compose other CSS variables.

This is also why variable customizations in Bootstrap have to come after @import "functions";, but before @import "variables"; and the rest of our import stack. The same applies to Sass maps—you must override the defaults before they get used. The following maps have been moved to the new _maps.scss:

  • $theme-colors-rgb
  • $utilities-colors
  • $utilities-text
  • $utilities-text-colors
  • $utilities-bg
  • $utilities-bg-colors
  • $negative-spacers
  • $gutters

Your custom Bootstrap CSS builds should now look like this with a separate maps import.

  // Functions come first
  @import "functions";

  // Optional variable overrides here
+ $custom-color: #df711b;
+ $custom-theme-colors: (
+   "custom": $custom-color
+ );

  // Variables come next
  @import "variables";

+ // Optional Sass map overrides here
+ $theme-colors: map-merge($theme-colors, $custom-theme-colors);
+
+ // Followed by our default maps
+ @import "maps";
+
  // Rest of our imports
  @import "mixins";
  @import "utilities";
  @import "root";
  @import "reboot";
  // etc

New helpers and utilities

We’re continuing to invest in our helpers and utilities to make it easier to quickly build and modify custom components.

  • Added new .text-bg-{color} helpers. Instead of setting individual .text-* and .bg-* utilities, you can now use the .text-bg-* helpers to set a background-color with contrasting foreground color.

  • Expanded font-weight utilities to include .fw-semibold for semibold fonts.

  • Expanded border-radius utilities to include two new sizes, .rounded-4 and .rounded-5, for more options.

Expect more improvements here as v5’s development continues.

Responsive offcanvas

Our Offcanvas component now has responsive variations. The original .offcanvas class remains unchanged—it hides content across all viewports. To make it responsive, change that .offcanvas class to any .offcanvas-{sm|md|lg|xl|xxl} class.

And tons more!

  • Introduced new $enable-container-classes option. — Now when opting into the experimental CSS Grid layout, .container-* classes will still be compiled, unless this option is set to false. Containers also now keep their gutter values.

  • Thicker table dividers are now opt-in. — We’ve removed the thicker and more difficult to override border between table groups and moved it to an optional class you can apply, .table-group-divider. See the table docs for an example.

  • Scrollspy has been rewritten to use the Intersection Observer API, which means you no longer need relative parent wrappers, deprecates offset config, and more. Look for your Scrollspy implementations to be more accurate and consistent in their nav highlighting.

  • Added .form-check-reverse modifier to flip the order of labels and associated checkboxes/radios.

  • Added striped columns support to tables via the new .table-striped-columns class.

For a complete list of changes, see the project on GitHub.

Coming soon: Dark mode!

Much of the work we’ve done in v5.2.0-beta1 has been in support of adding dark mode to Bootstrap. Yes, it’s finally coming in our next minor release!

Dark mode

We’re adding tons of new global CSS variables, cleaning up docs styles, and better supporting overall customization. Some details and topics being worked on for dark mode:

  • Do we provide a JS plugin for toggling color modes? Right now we’re just building custom functionality for our docs.

  • Our current implementation is being built with data-theme selectors which allows explicit color mode switching (via user control vs and system preference) and custom color modes beyond light and dark.

  • We’re adding quite a few new colors outside $theme-colors to improve subtle UI customization. These are being implemented via :root and [data-theme="{theme}"] selectors for global use.

We’d love your feedback along the way, so check out the dark mode pull request and dark mode staging site to test it out.

Also coming in v5.3.0

There’s lots to look forward to in our next minor release, though we’ll likely have some bug fixes along the way.

And likely a lot more!

Get the release

Head to https://getbootstrap.com for the latest. It’s also been pushed to npm:

npm i bootstrap@v5.2.0-beta1

Read the GitHub v5.2.0-beta1 changelog for a complete list of changes in this release.

Support the team

Visit our Open Collective page or our team members’ GitHub profiles to help support the maintainers contributing to Bootstrap.

Bootstrap Icons v1.8.0

@mdo January 31, 2022

Bootstrap Icons v1.8.0 is here with over 140 new icons, including dozens of new heart icons ready for Valentine’s Day and dozens of filetype icons. We’re now at almost 1,700 icons and is once again our second largest release. Keep reading to see what’s new.

140+ new icons

Perfect for Valentine’s Day or any other time you need to show a little heart, there are dozens of icons to choose from.

New love icons in v1.8.0

Want to visually show the extensions of your files? There are tons of new options for programming languages, audio and video, images, and more.

New filetype icons in v1.8.0

Elsewhere we’ve expanded a number of other categories of icons. There are some new medical icons (more are planned), lots of new clipboard icons, additional tools, and more.

Miscellaneous new icons in v1.8.0

Looking for more new icons? Head to the issue tracker to check for open requests or submit a new one.

Install

To get started, install or update via npm:

npm i bootstrap-icons

Or Composer:

composer require twbs/bootstrap-icons

You can also download the release from GitHub, or download just the SVGs and fonts (without the rest of the repository files).

Figma

The Figma file is now published to the Figma Community! It’s the same Bootstrap Icons Figma file you’ve seen from previous releases, just a little more accessible to those using the app.

Bootstrap Icons v1.7.0

@mdo November 01, 2021

Bootstrap Icons v1.7.0 is here with 120 new and updated icons, taking us over 1,500 total icons for the project! It’s the largest update since the initial release, so keep reading to see what’s new.

120 new icons

This update was a lot of fun for me—drawing all these tiny computer parts most of all! There are dozens of new computer-related icons for parts, ports, and peripheral devices. There are also several new brand icons, including Meta, and some other fun icons like a new robot head and a boombox.

New icons in v1.7.0

Looking for more new icons? Head to the issue tracker to check for open requests or submit a new one.

Install

To get started, install or update via npm:

npm i bootstrap-icons

Or Composer:

composer require twbs/bootstrap-icons

You can also download the release from GitHub, or download just the SVGs and fonts (without the rest of the repository files).

Figma

The Figma file is now published to the Figma Community! It’s the same Bootstrap Icons Figma file you’ve seen from previous releases, just a little more accessible to those using the app.

Bootstrap v4.6.1

@mdo October 28, 2021

Bootstrap v4.6.1 has finally arrived! Biggest change here is a re-implementation of our Sass division functions and updates from v5, as well as some accessibility improvements and general bug fixes.

Read on for the highlights or head to the v4.6.x docs to see the latest in action.

What’s changed

  • Replace Sass division with multiplication and custom divide() function
  • fix(forms): input-group and validation icons
  • Fix minor visual bug in FF caused by moz-focusring
  • Adjust SAFE_URL_PATTERN regex for use with test method of regexes
  • Add sms in the SAFE_URL_PATTERN for sanitizer
  • Adjust feedback icon position and padding for select.form-control
  • Carousel: use buttons, not links, for prev/next controls
  • v4: Sass docs for default variables
  • Handle complex expressions in add() & subtract()
  • More concise improvements for add() and subtract()
  • Remove aria-haspopup from dropdowns
  • Dropdown: support .dropdown-item wrapped in <li> tags
  • Update Node versions in JS tests (drop Node 10, add Node 16) and add variables for vertical-align in spinners
  • Replace Freenode with Libera IRC server
  • Fix repetition in the Navbar docs description
  • Enable 0.x with negative margins in utilities
  • Remove print thead rule
  • Fix prevented show event disabling modals with fade class from being displayed again
  • Input group validation with custom-file input
  • Add eslint-plugin-qunit and tighten JS tests
  • Update our tests to Node 16 and npm 8
  • Disabled link cleanup

Review the GitHub v4.6.1 release changelog for more details.

Next up

We’ll be flipping back to v5 development after this release, focusing on v5.2.0 with some additional updates to using more CSS variables and other awesome features. Sometime after that, we hope to ship a v4.7.0 release with some additional backported features and improvements to v4.

Please keep the feedback coming on what we can improve, how our releases are performing, and any other suggestions.

Support the team

Visit our Open Collective page or our team members’ GitHub profiles to help support the maintainers contributing to Bootstrap.

Bootstrap Icons v1.6.0

@mdo October 13, 2021

Bootstrap Icons v1.6.0 adds over 30 new icons, adds official Composer support, includes a new .scss stylesheet for the icon font, plus some other enhancements and bug fixes. Keep reading to see what’s new!

1,400+ icons

We’ve officially passed 1,400 glyphs in Bootstrap Icons with this release—woohoo! Seems utterly insane to me that the project has come this far and there are still so many more icons to include.

New icons in v1.6.0

We have a few dozen new and updated icons in this release, including:

  • New brand icons for Apple, Behance, Dribbble, Line, Medium, Microsoft, PayPal, Pinterest, Signal, Snapchat, Spotify, Stack Overflow, Strava, Vimeo, Windows, and WordPress
  • Two new easel variations
  • New fingerprint icon
  • New magic stick
  • New people variations for rolodex, workspace, and video chat
  • New webcam icons
  • New radioactive icon
  • New fan icon
  • New hypnotize icon
  • New yin yang icon
  • New activity/pulse icon
  • Updated large dash, plus, slash, x, i, ?, !, and check icons to have a thinner stroke that better matches other icons
  • Updated lamp icons
  • Updated graph-up and graph-down icons, with the previous ones being renamed to graph-up-arrow and graph-down-arrow

New features

We’ve added a handful of new features and enhancements to how you can use Bootstrap Icons in this release:

  • Added Composer support with automatic publishing to Packagist. See the official package for more information.

  • Added new bootstrap-icons.scss stylesheet for the icon font. This includes font name and path variables, plus a Sass map of icon names and unicode values.

  • Added new .bi CSS selector to the icon font ruleset (in addition to the attribute selectors we had through v1.5.0) to allow for easier @extending of icon styles. This has also been reflected in the new .scss stylesheet.

Our next minor release will continue to see improvements to our icon permalink pages, adding more options for copying and pasting our icons. If you have other suggestions, please don’t hesitate to open a new issue!

Bug fixes

We’ve fixed a few glitches with existing icons in this release:

  • droplet-fill now renders correctly thanks to an updated fill rule
  • lamp and lamp-fill now look more like lamps and less like toilets 😅
  • coin now renders correctly thanks to an updated fill rule
  • cloud now renders correctly thanks to an updated fill rule
  • textarea-resize is no longer incorrectly placed in the viewBox

Found another bug, or have a suggestion? Check out the issue tracker and open an issue if you don’t see one already opened.

Install

To get started, install or update via npm:

npm i bootstrap-icons

Or Composer:

composer require twbs/bootstrap-icons

You can also download the release from GitHub, or download just the SVGs and fonts (without the rest of the repository files).

Figma

The Figma file is now published to the Figma Community! It’s the same Bootstrap Icons Figma file you’ve seen from previous releases, just a little more accessible to those using the app.

Bootstrap 5.1.2

@mdo October 05, 2021

Bootstrap v5.1.2 is here with a handful of improvements across our components, plus a fix for an issue in another project that prevented our Sass from compiling properly. Keep reading for the highlights.

Highlights

  • Temporarily patched a postcss-values-parser issue by rearranging our calc() functions that use negative numbers. This should restore the ability to import and compile Bootstrap’s Sass in create-react-app.
  • Added border-radius sizes to small and large .form-selects
  • Added align-self: center to buttons for improved rendering in flex containers
  • Fixed Collapse regression that prevented toggling between sibling children
  • Updated JS Sanitizer to add sms in the SAFE_URL_PATTERN
  • Improved docs around .img-fluid
  • Added role="switch" to our form switches in our docs
  • Implemented GitHub Issue forms to replace our previous issue templates.

Up next

Up next is our v5.2.0 release, adding more utility improvements and fixing an issue with how Sass handles re-assigned maps and variables. Alongside that, we’ll be shipping an update to v4 soon as well.

Get the release

Head to https://getbootstrap.com for the latest. It’s also been pushed to npm:

npm i bootstrap

Review the GitHub v5.1.2 release changelog for a complete list of changes since our last release.

Support the team

Visit our Open Collective page or our team members’ GitHub profiles to help support the maintainers contributing to Bootstrap.

Bootstrap 5.1.1

@mdo September 07, 2021

Bootstrap v5.1.1 has landed with a handful of bug fixes and documentation improvements. Following this release, we’ll be shipping another bugfix and docs update before moving onto additional new features. Keep reading for the highlights.

Highlights

  • Fixed broken .bg-body utility. This was caused by the same --body-rgb CSS variable for both text and background. --body-rgb is now split into --body-color-rgb and --body-bg-rgb for proper usage. While this could be considered a breaking change, the current implementation was outright broken, so we’ve chosen to address this head-on.
  • All CSS dist builds now include _root.scss and all our :root-level CSS variables. The goal here is consistency across the distribution files so that no matter what CSS build you use, you have the same level of customization potential.
  • Updated global options page to document $enable-smooth-scroll variable.
  • Added callout to the Stacks page about gap browser support with flexbox.
  • Cleaned up documentation and usage of disabled links, especially for <a> based buttons.
  • Fixed toggle between modal regression. See docs example.
  • Fixed regression in tooltips where content doesn’t update after the first show().
  • Fixed collapse toggle unintentionally hiding descendant tab panels.
  • Improved Alerts live example documentation.
  • Updated $dropdown-link-hover-color to modify the $dropdown-link-color instead of base $gray-900 variable for improved customization.
  • Clarified JavaScript import usage for our Webpack guide.

About Sass compilers

We’ve had a number of Visual Studio users mention that Sass compiling for Bootstrap 5.1.0 is broken when using the Web Compiler extension. This extension hasn’t been updated in more than five years, so we recommend moving to a newer alternative. Some users mentioned the Sass Compiler extension as a successful alternative. If you have additional recommendations, please leave a comment to share.

Get the release

Head to https://getbootstrap.com for the latest. It’s also been pushed to npm:

npm i bootstrap

Review the GitHub v5.1.1 release changelog for a complete list of changes since our last release.

Support the team

Visit our Open Collective page or our team members’ GitHub profiles to help support the maintainers contributing to Bootstrap.

Ten Years of Bootstrap

@mdo August 19, 2021

Ten years ago today, we shipped the first release of Bootstrap. Releasing it on GitHub was my first real plunge into open source—what an introduction! Here we are a decade later with one of the most widely used open source projects and frontend toolkits on the web. Happy birthday, Bootstrap—what a ride!

While numbers certainly don’t tell the whole story, Bootstrap has reached some incredible milestones over the past decade. Here are some highlights:

  • Over 2.5 billion pageviews for our docs. That’s more than 685,000 a day.
  • 394,000,000 npm downloads since 2015—over 131 million of which were in 2020 alone. That’s 180,000 a day over the last six years.
  • 50 million RubyGems downloads
  • 57 million NuGet downloads
  • 7.5 million Packagist installs
  • Used by over 22% of all websites
  • Used by 2.7 million projects on GitHub
  • Over 21,100 commits on GitHub with nearly 35,000 issues and pull requests

Hidden in all those numbers are millions and millions of people that interact with Bootstrap just by visiting the sites and apps built with it. It’s still mind-blowing to see what’s been built with it after over the years, especially with how it all started.

Back in early 2011, the two of us were just a couple of nerds working at Twitter—Jacob was an engineer working on internal tools, me a product designer working on ads. Our paths crossed when the project I was working on needed to have its own internal tools app built for managing Twitter ad campaigns. Over a few months, we started working more and more together before ultimately deciding to release our project to the world.

Here we are 10 years later, still just a handful of nerds doing what we love, contributing to open source, and having an impact on people’s lives through our work. Bootstrap continues to be a passion project for me, from major rewrites to new features and from a growing icon library to a full-blown marketplace. It’s been an incredible journey, and one that’s still going strong thanks to the community’s love and the support of a small group of maintainers over the years.

The maintainers and contributors deserve the utmost thanks and appreciation. Please join me in thanking them—and every other open source maintainer!—whenever and however frequently you can. While this list can never fully represent all the contributions made to Bootstrap, I want to give a special shoutout to maintainers past and present, and some of the most prolific contributors.

Thank you again, folks. And to everyone who has used Bootstrap over the years, thank you for making a decade of building with Bootstrap possible. Cheers to whatever comes next, and see you soon for our next release.

<3,
@mdo