touch-action

The touch-action CSS property sets how an element's region can be manipulated by a touchscreen user (for example, by zooming features built into the browser).

/* Keyword values */
touch-action: auto;
touch-action: none;
touch-action: pan-x;
touch-action: pan-left;
touch-action: pan-right;
touch-action: pan-y;
touch-action: pan-up;
touch-action: pan-down;
touch-action: pinch-zoom;
touch-action: manipulation;

/* Global values */
touch-action: inherit;
touch-action: initial;
touch-action: unset;

By default, panning (scrolling) and pinching gestures are handled exclusively by the browser. An application using Pointer events will receive a pointercancel event when the browser starts handling a touch gesture. By explicitly specifying which gestures should be handled by the browser, an application can supply its own behavior in pointermove and pointerup listeners for the remaining gestures. Applications using Touch events disable the browser handling of gestures by calling preventDefault(), but should also use touch-action to ensure the browser knows the intent of the application before any event listeners have been invoked.

When a gesture is started, the browser intersects the touch-action values of the touched element and its ancestors, up to the one that implements the gesture (in other words, the first containing scrolling element). This means that in practice, touch-action is typically applied only to top-level elements which have some custom behavior, without needing to specify touch-action explicitly on any of that element's descendants.

Syntax

The touch-action property may be specified as either:

• One of the keywords auto, none, manipulation, or
• One of the keywords pan-x, pan-left, pan-right, and/or one of the keywords pan-y, pan-up, pan-down, plus optionally the keyword pinch-zoom.

Values

auto

Enable browser handling of all panning and zooming gestures.

none

Disable browser handling of all panning and zooming gestures.

pan-x

Enable single-finger horizontal panning gestures. May be combined with pan-y, pan-up, pan-down and/or pinch-zoom.

pan-y

Enable single-finger vertical panning gestures. May be combined with pan-x, pan-left, pan-right and/or pinch-zoom.

manipulation

Enable panning and pinch zoom gestures, but disable additional non-standard gestures such as double-tap to zoom. Disabling double-tap to zoom removes the need for browsers to delay the generation of click events when the user taps the screen. This is an alias for "pan-x pan-y pinch-zoom" (which, for compatibility, is itself still valid).

pan-left, pan-right, pan-up, pan-down

Enable single-finger gestures that begin by scrolling in the given direction(s). Once scrolling has started, the direction may still be reversed. Note that scrolling "up" (pan-up) means that the user is dragging their finger downward on the screen surface, and likewise pan-left means the user is dragging their finger to the right. Multiple directions may be combined except when there is a simpler representation (for example, "pan-left pan-right" is invalid since "pan-x" is simpler, but "pan-left pan-down" is valid).

pinch-zoom

Enable multi-finger panning and zooming of the page. This may be combined with any of the pan- values.

Accessibility concerns

A declaration of touch-action: none; may inhibit operating a browser's zooming capabilities. This will prevent people experiencing low vision conditions from being able to read and understand page content.

• MDN Understanding WCAG, Guideline 1.4 explanations
• Understanding Success Criterion 1.4.4 | Understanding WCAG 2.0

Formal definition

Formal syntax

auto | none | [ [ pan-x | pan-left | pan-right ] | [ pan-y | pan-up | pan-down ] | pinch-zoom ] | manipulation

Examples

Disabling all gestures

The most common usage is to disable all gestures on an element (and its non-scrollable descendants) that provides its own dragging and zooming behavior – such as a map or game surface.

HTML

<div id="map"></div>

CSS

#map {
  height: 400px;
  width: 400px;
  background: blue;
  touch-action: none;
}

Result

Specifications

Browser compatibility

See also

• Pointer Events
• WebKit Blog More Responsive Tapping on iOS
• Google Developers Blog Making touch scrolling fast by default
• Scroll Snap