SimpleBar
:warning: SimpleBar v5 is here! There are some breaking changes! Make sure to check out the changelog before updating.
SimpleBar is a plugin that tries to solve a long time problem: how to get custom scrollbars for your web-app while keeping a good user experience?
SimpleBar does NOT implement a custom scroll behaviour. It keeps the native overflow: auto
scroll and only replace the scrollbar visual appearance.
SimpleBar is meant to be as easy to use as possible and lightweight. If you want something more advanced I recommend KingSora 's Overlay Scrollbars.
Installation
- Via npm
npm install simplebar --save
- Via Yarn
yarn add simplebar
- Via <script>
tag
<link
rel="stylesheet"
href="https://unpkg.com/simplebar@latest/dist/simplebar.css"
/>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/simplebar@latest/dist/simplebar.min.js"></script>
<link
rel="stylesheet"
href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/simplebar@latest/dist/simplebar.css"
/>
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/simplebar@latest/dist/simplebar.min.js"></script>
note: you should replace @latest
to the latest version (ex @5.3.3
), if you want to lock to a specific version.
You can find the full list of modules available there.
Usage
Check out the React and Vue examples.
If you are using Gatsby, please see #345.
If you are using a module loader (like Webpack) you first need to load SimpleBar:
import 'simplebar';
import 'simplebar/dist/simplebar.css';
Set data-simplebar
on the element you want your custom scrollbar. You're done.
<div data-simplebar></div>
Don't forget to import both css and js in your project!
Noscript support
To make sure your elements are scrollable when JavaScript is disabled, it's important to include this snippet in your <head>
to reset scrolling:
<noscript>
<style>
.simplebar-content-wrapper {
overflow: auto;
}
</style>
</noscript>
:warning: Warning!
SimpleBar is not intended to be used on the body
element! I don't recommend wrapping your entire web page inside a custom scroll as it will often badly affect the user experience (slower scroll performance compared to the native body scroll, no native scroll behaviours like click on track, etc.). Do it at your own risk! SimpleBar is meant to improve the experience of internal web page scrolling; such as a chat box or a small scrolling area. Please read the caveats section first to be aware of the limitations!
Troubleshooting
If you are experiencing issues when setting up SimpleBar, it is most likely because your styles are clashing with SimpleBar ones. Make sure the element you are setting SimpleBar on does not override any SimpleBar css properties! We recommend to not style that element at all and use an inner element instead.
Thanks to BrowserStack for sponsoring open source projects and letting us test SimpleBar for free.
- Documentation
- Browsers support
- Demo
- How it works
- Caveats
- Changelog
- Credits
1. Documentation
Other usages
You can start SimpleBar manually if you need to:
new SimpleBar(document.getElementById('myElement'));
or
Array.prototype.forEach.call(
document.querySelectorAll('.myElements'),
el => new SimpleBar()
);
If you want to use jQuery:
new SimpleBar($('#myElement')[0]);
or
$('.myElements').each(element, new SimpleBar());
Styling
The default styling is applied with CSS. There is no "built-in" way to style the scrollbar, you just need to override the default CSS.
Ex, to change the color of the scrollbar:
.simplebar-scrollbar::before {
background-color: red;
}
Options
Options can be applied to the plugin during initialization:
new SimpleBar(document.getElementById('myElement'), {
option1: value1,
option2: value2
});
or using data-attributes:
<div data-simplebar data-simplebar-auto-hide="false"></div>
Available options are:
autoHide
By default SimpleBar automatically hides the scrollbar if the user is not scrolling (it emulates Mac OSX Lion's scrollbar). You can make the scrollbar always visible by setting the autoHide
option to false
:
new SimpleBar(document.getElementById('myElement'), { autoHide: false });
Default value is true
.
You can also control the animation via CSS as it's a simple CSS opacity transition.
classNames
It is possible to change the default class names that SimpleBar uses. To get your own styles to work refer to simplebar.css
to get an idea how to setup your css.
content
represents the wrapper for the content being scrolled.scrollContent
represents the container containing the elements being scrolled.scrollbar
defines the style of the scrollbar with which the user can interact to scroll the content.track
styles the area surrounding the scrollbar
.
classNames: {
content: 'simplebar-content',
scrollContent: 'simplebar-scroll-content',
scrollbar: 'simplebar-scrollbar',
track: 'simplebar-track'
}
forceVisible
You can force the track to be visible (same behaviour as overflow: scroll
) using the forceVisible
option:
forceVisible: true|'x'|'y' (default to `false`)
By default, SimpleBar behave like overflow: auto
.
ariaLabel
You can set custom aria-label attribute for users with screen reader using the ariaLabel
option:
ariaLabel: 'Your label' (default to `scrollable content`)
direction (RTL support)
You can activate RTL support by passing the direction
option:
direction: 'rtl' (default to `ltr`)
You will need both data-simplebar-direction='rtl'
and a css rule with direction: rtl
.
timeout
Define the delay until the scrollbar hides. Has no effect if autoHide
is false
.
Default value is 1000
.
clickOnTrack
Controls the click on track behaviour.
Default to true
.
scrollbarMinSize / scrollbarMaxSize
Controls the min and max size of the scrollbar in px
.
Default for scrollbarMinSize
is 25
.
Default for scrollbarMaxSize
is 0
(no max size).
Apply scroll vertically only
Simply define in css overflow-x: hidden
on your element.
Notifying the plugin of content changes
Note: you shouldn't need to use these functions as SimpleBar takes care of that automatically. This is for advanced usage only.
If later on you dynamically modify your content, for instance changing its height or width, or adding or removing content, you should recalculate the scrollbars like so:
const simpleBar = new SimpleBar(document.getElementById('myElement'));
simpleBar.recalculate();
Trigger programmatical scrolling
If you want to access to the original scroll element, you can retrieve it via a getter:
const simpleBar = new SimpleBar(document.getElementById('myElement'));
simpleBar.getScrollElement();
Subscribe to scroll
event
You can subscribe to the scroll
event, just like you do with native scrolling elements:
const simpleBar = new SimpleBar(document.getElementById('myElement'));
simpleBar.getScrollElement().addEventListener('scroll', function(...));
Add content dynamically
You can retrieve the element containing data like this:
const simpleBar = new SimpleBar(document.getElementById('myElement'));
simpleBar.getContentElement();
Disable Mutation Observer (core package only)
SimpleBar.removeObserver();
Retrieve SimpleBar instance from data-simplebar nodes
SimpleBar.instances.get(document.querySelector('[data-simplebar]']))
Unmount/destroy
const simpleBar = new SimpleBar(document.getElementById('myElement'));
simpleBar.unMount()
:warning: Calling this function will not restore the default scrollbar!
A common usecase is to only want SimpleBar on desktop/wider screens, but instead of trying to mount/unmount the plugin based on screen size, you should instead simply never mount it in the first place.
For example if you want it only on desktop you can first test for screen size using matchMedia
:
if (window.matchMedia('(min-width: 600px)').matches) {
new SimpleBar(..)
}
Non-JS fallback
SimpleBar hides the browser's default scrollbars, which obviously is undesirable if the user has JavaScript disabled. To restore the browser's scrollbars you can include the following noscript
element in your document's head
:
<noscript>
<style>
[data-simplebar] {
overflow: auto;
}
</style>
</noscript>
2. Browsers support
SimpleBar has been tested on the following browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, IE11.
Notice: IE10 doesn't support MutationObserver
so you will still need to instantiate SimpleBar manually and call recalculate()
as needed (or you can just use a polyfill for MutationObserver
).
If you want to apply SimpleBar on an SVG element on IE11, you will need a polyfill for classList
.
IE9 is not supported anymore (because we use translate3d
to position the scrollbar) so please use SimpleBar v1 if you really need it.
3. Demo
https://grsmto.github.io/simplebar/
4. How it works
SimpleBar only does one thing: replace the browser's default scrollbars with a custom CSS-styled scrollbar without sacrificing performance. Unlike most other plugins, SimpleBar doesn't mimic scroll behaviour with Javascript, which typically causes jank and strange scrolling behaviour. You keep the awesomeness of native scrolling… with a custom scrollbar!
Design your scrollbar how you like, with CSS, across all browsers.
For the most part SimpleBar uses the browser's native scrolling functionality, but replaces the conventional scrollbar with a custom CSS-styled scrollbar. The plugin listens for scroll events and redraws the custom scrollbar accordingly.
Key to this technique is hiding the native browser scrollbar. The scrollable element is made slightly wider/taller than its containing element, effectively hiding the scrollbar from view.
5. Caveats
- SimpleBar can't be used on the
<body>
, <textarea>
, <table>
or <select>
elements. <iframe>
should be working (depends of your usecase). If you are looking to support these, I suggest taking a look at OverLayScrollbars. - SimpleBar doesn't currently support
overflow: visible
. Which means any children of your scrolling div will be clipped (like with overflow: hidden
).
Please take a look at this comparison table to see what SimpleBar does compare to others.
Ruby On Rails
To include SimpleBar in the Ruby On Rails asset pipeline, use the simplebar-rails gem.
Ember.js
To use SimpleBar with the Ember.js framework, use the ember-simplebars addon.