CSS Grid
With Bootstrap 5, we've added the option to enable a separate grid system that's built on CSS Grid, but with a Bootstrap twist. You still get classes you can apply on a whim to build responsive layouts, but with a different approach under the hood.
Examples
Three columns
Three equal-width columns across all viewports and devices can be created by using the size="4" atttibutes. Add responsive classes to change the layout by viewport size.
Responsive
Use responsive classes to adjust your layout across viewports. Here we start with two columns on the narrowest viewports, and then grow to three columns on medium viewports and above.
Compare that to this two column layout at all viewports.
Wrapping
Grid items automatically wrap to the next line when there's no more room horizontally. Note that the gap applies to horizontal and vertical gaps between grid items.
Starts
Start classes aim to replace our default grid's offset classes, but they're not entirely the same. CSS Grid creates a grid template through styles that tell browsers to "start at this column" and "end at this column." Those properties are column-start and column-end. Start classes are shorthand for the former. Pair them with the column classes to size and align your columns however you need. Start classes begin at 1 as 0 is an invalid value for these properties.
Auto columns
When there are no classes on the grid items (the immediate children of a Grid), each grid item will automatically be sized to one column.
This behavior can be mixed with grid column classes.
Nesting
Similar to our default grid system, our CSS Grid allows for easy nesting of Grids. However, unlike the default, this grid inherits changes in the rows, columns, and gaps. Consider the example below:
- We override the default number of columns with attribute
columns. - In the first auto-column, the column count is inherited and each column is one-third of the available width.
- In the second auto-column, we've reset the column count on the nested
Gridto 12 (our default). - The third auto-column has no nested content.
In practice this allows for more complex and custom layouts when compared to our default grid system.
Customizing
Customize the number of columns, the number of rows, and the width of the gaps with local CSS variables.
| Attribute | Fallback value | Description |
|---|---|---|
rows | 1 | The number of rows in your grid template |
columns | 12 | The number of columns in your grid template |
gap | 1.5rem | The size of the gap between columns (vertical and horizontal) |
These CSS variables have no default value; instead, they apply fallback values that are used _until_ a local instance is provided. For example, we use rows:1 for our CSS Grid rows, which ignores rows because that hasn't been set anywhere yet. Once it is, the Grid instance will use that value instead of the fallback value of 1.
No grid classes
Immediate children elements of Grid are grid items, so they'll be sized without explicitly adding a GridCol class.
Columns and gaps
Adjust the number of columns and the gap.
Adding rows
Adding more rows and changing the placement of columns:
Gaps
Change the vertical gaps only by modifying the row-gap. Note that we use gap on .grids, but row-gap and column-gap can be modified as needed.
Because of that, you can have different vertical and horizontal gaps, which can take a single value (all sides) or a pair of values (vertical and horizontal). This can be applied with an inline style for gap, or with our gap attribute.