Find invalid, overridden, inactive, and other CSS

This guide assumes that you're familiar with inspecting CSS in Chrome DevTools. SeeView and change CSSto learn the basics.

Inspect the CSS you author

Suppose that you added some CSS to an element and want to make sure the new styles are applied properly. When you refresh the page, the element looks the same as before. Something is wrong.

The first thing to do isinspect the elementand make sure that your new CSS is actually applied to the element.

Sometimes, you'll see your new CSS in theElements>Stylespane but your new CSS is inpale text,non-editable, crossed out, or has a warning or hint icon next to it.

Understand CSS in the Styles pane

TheStylespane recognizes many kinds of CSS issues and highlights them in different ways.

Matched and unmatched selectors

TheStylespane shows matched selectors in regular text and unmatched ones inpale text.

Invalid values and declarations

TheStylespane crosses out and displayswarning icons next to the following:

• An entire CSS declaration (property and value) when the CSS property is invalid or unknown.
• Just the value when the CSS property is valid but the value is invalid.

Overridden

TheStylespane crosses out properties that are overridden by other properties according to theCascading order.

In this example, thewidth: 300px;style attribute on the element overrideswidth: 100%on the.youtubeclass.

Inactive

TheStylespane displays inpale textand putsinformation icons next to properties that are valid but have no effect because of other properties.

These pale properties are inactive because of CSS logic, not theCascading order.

In this example, thedisplay: block;property disablesjustify-contentandalign-itemsthat control flex or grid layouts.

Inherited and non-inherited

TheStylespane lists properties inInherited from <element-name>sections depending on theirdefault inheritance:

• Inherited by default are in regular text.
• Non-inherited by default are inpale text.

Shorthand

Shorthand (concise) propertieslet you set multiple CSS properties at once and can make your stylesheet more readable. However, due to the short nature of such properties, you may miss a longhand (precise) property that overrides a property implied by the shorthand.

TheStylespane displays shorthand properties asdrop-down lists that contain all the properties that are shortened.

In this example, two of four shortened properties are actually overridden.

Non-editable

TheStylespane displays properties that can't be edited initalic text.For example, the CSS from the following sources can't be edited:

• user agent stylesheet—Chrome's default stylesheet.

  

• Style-related HTML attributes on the element, for example, height, width, color, etc. You can edit them in the DOM tree and this updates the CSS in theStylespane, but not the other way around.

  In this example, theheight= "48"attribute on an<svg>element is set to50.This updates the corresponding property undersvg[Attributes Style]in theStylespane.

Inspect an element that still isn't styled the way you think

To try to find what goes wrong, you may want to check:

• CSS documentationandselector specificityin the tooltips in theStylespane.
• TheComputedpane to see the "final"CSS applied to an elementand compare to that you declared.

TheElements>Stylespane displays the exact set of CSS rules as they are written in various stylesheets. On the other hand, theElements>Computedpane lists resolved CSS values that Chrome uses to render an element:

• CSS derived frominheritance
• Cascadewinners
• Longhand properties (precise), not shorthand (concise)
• Computed values, for example,font-size: 14pxinstead offont-size: 70%

Understand CSS in the Computed pane

TheComputedpane also displays various properties differently.

Declared and inherited

TheComputedpane lists the properties declared in any stylesheet in regular font, both element's own and inherited. Click theexpand icon next to them to see their source.

To see the declaration in theStylespane, hover over the expanded property and click thearrow button.

To see the declaration in theSourcespane, click the link to the source file.

For properties with multiple sources, theComputedpane shows theCascade winnerfirst.

Runtime

TheComputedpane lists property values calculated at runtime inpale text.

In this example, Chrome calculated the following for the<ul>element:

• Thewidthrelative its parent,<div>
• Theheightrelative to its children, the two<li>elements

Non-inherited and custom

To make theComputedpane showallproperties and their values, checkShow all.All properties include:

• Initial values for non-inherited propertiesinpale text.
• Custom properties—with a--prefix in regular text. Such properties are inherited by default.

To break this big list into categories, checkGroup.

This example shows the initial values for non-inherited properties underAnimationand custom properties underCSS Variables.

Search for duplicates

To investigate a specific property and its potential duplicates, type that property name in theFiltertextbox. You can do this both in theStylesandComputedpanes.

SeeSearch and filter an element's CSS.

Find unused CSS

SeeCoverage: Find unused JavaScript and CSS.