A polyfill for the 'scroll-behavior' CSS-property

Description
The scroll-behavior
CSS-property as well as the extensions to the Element interface in the CSSOM View Module CSS property sets the behavior for a scrolling box when scrolling is triggered by the navigation or CSSOM scrolling APIs.
This polyfill brings this new feature to all browsers.
It is very efficient, tiny, and works with the latest browser technologies such as Shadow DOM.
This polyfill also implements the extensions to the Element interface in the CSSOM View Module such as Element.prototype.scroll
, Element.prototype.scrollTo
, Element.protype.scrollBy
, and Element.prototype.scrollIntoView
.
Features
- Spec-compliant
- Tiny
- Efficient
- Works with the latest browser technologies, including Shadow DOM
- Seamless
Table of Contents
Install
NPM
$ npm install scroll-behavior-polyfill
Yarn
$ yarn add scroll-behavior-polyfill
Applying the polyfill
The polyfill will be feature detected and applied if and only if the browser doesn't support the property already.
To include it, add this somewhere:
import "scroll-behavior-polyfill";
However, it is strongly suggested that you only include the polyfill for browsers that doesn't already support scroll-behavior
.
One way to do so is with an async import:
if (!("scrollBehavior" in document.documentElement.style)) {
await import("scroll-behavior-polyfill");
}
Alternatively, you can use Polyfill.app which uses this polyfill and takes care of only loading the polyfill if needed as well as adding the language features that the polyfill depends on (See dependencies).
Usage
Declarative API
You can define the scroll-behavior
of Elements via one of the following approaches:
- A style attribute including a
scroll-behavior
property.
- An element with a
scroll-behavior
attribute.
- Or, an element with a
CSSStyleDeclaration
with a scrollBehavior
property.
This means that either of the following approaches will work:
<div style="scroll-behavior: smooth"></div>
<div scroll-behavior="smooth"></div>
<script>
element.style.scrollBehavior = "smooth";
</script>
See this section for information about why scroll-behavior
values provided in stylesheets won't be discovered by the polyfill.
Imperative API
You can of course also use the imperative scroll()
, scrollTo
, scrollBy
, and scrollIntoView
APIs and provide scroll-behavior
options.
For example:
window.scroll({
behavior: "smooth",
top: 100,
left: 0
});
myElement.scrollIntoView();
myElement.scrollBy({
behavior: "smooth",
top: 50,
left: 0
});
You can also use the scrollTop
and scrollLeft
setters, both of which works with the polyfill too:
element.scrollTop += 100;
element.scrollLeft += 50;
Dependencies & Browser support
This polyfill is distributed in ES3-compatible syntax, but is using some modern APIs and language features which must be available:
requestAnimationFrame
Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptor
Object.defineProperty
For by far the most browsers, these features will already be natively available.
Generally, I would highly recommend using something like Polyfill.app which takes care of this stuff automatically.
Contributing
Do you want to contribute? Awesome! Please follow these recommendations.
Maintainers
Backers
Patreon
Become a backer and get your name, avatar, and Twitter handle listed here.

FAQ
Are there any known quirks?
License
MIT © Frederik Wessberg (@FredWessberg) (Website)