Box Shadow

Utilities for controlling the box shadow of an element.

Class reference

Outer shadow

Use the .shadow, .shadow-md, .shadow-lg, .shadow-xl, or .shadow-2xl utilities to apply different sized outer box shadows to an element.

<div class="shadow"></div>
<div class="shadow-md"></div>
<div class="shadow-lg"></div>
<div class="shadow-xl"></div>
<div class="shadow-2xl"></div>

Inner shadow

Use the .shadow-inner utility to apply a subtle inset box shadow to an element. This can be useful for things like form controls or wells.

<div class="shadow-inner"></div>

Outline shadow

Use the .shadow-outline utility to apply a focus-ring-style shadow to an element. This can be useful when combined with .focus:outline-none to create a better looking focus style that follows an element’s border radius.

<button class="focus:outline-none focus:shadow-outline ...">
  Button
</button>

No shadow

Use .shadow-none to remove an existing box shadow from an element. This is most commonly used to remove a shadow that was applied at a smaller breakpoint.

<div class="shadow-none"></div>

Responsive

To control the shadow of an element at a specific breakpoint, add a {screen}: prefix to any existing shadow utility. For example, use md:shadow-lg to apply the shadow-lg utility at only medium screen sizes and above.

For more information about Tailwind’s responsive design features, check out the Responsive Design documentation.

<div class="shadow sm:shadow-md md:shadow-lg lg:shadow-xl xl:shadow-2xl ...">
  <!-- ... -->
</div>

Customizing

Box Shadows

By default Tailwind provides three drop shadow utilities, one inner shadow utility, and a utility for removing existing shadows. You can change, add, or remove these by editing the theme.boxShadow section of your Tailwind config.

If a default shadow is provided, it will be used for the non-suffixed .shadow utility. Any other keys will be used as suffixes, for example the key ‘2’ will create a corresponding .shadow-2 utility.

// tailwind.config.js
module.exports = {
 theme: {
 boxShadow: {
      default: '0 1px 3px 0 rgba(0, 0, 0, .1), 0 1px 2px 0 rgba(0, 0, 0, .06)'
      md: ' 0 4px 6px -1px rgba(0, 0, 0, .1), 0 2px 4px -1px rgba(0, 0, 0, .06)'
      lg: ' 0 10px 15px -3px rgba(0, 0, 0, .1), 0 4px 6px -2px rgba(0, 0, 0, .05)'
      xl: ' 0 20px 25px -5px rgba(0, 0, 0, .1), 0 10px 10px -5px rgba(0, 0, 0, .04)'
      2xl: '0 25px 50px -12px rgba(0, 0, 0, .25)'
+     3xl: '0 35px 60px -15px rgba(0, 0, 0, .3)'
      inner: 'inset 0 2px 4px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.06)'
-     outline: '0 0 0 3px rgba(66,153,225,0.5)'
+     focus: '0 0 0 3px rgba(66,153,225,0.5)'
      'none': 'none',
 }
 }
}

Responsive and pseudo-class variants

By default, only responsive, hover and focus variants are generated for box shadow utilities.

You can control which variants are generated for the box shadow utilities by modifying the boxShadow property in the variants section of your tailwind.config.js file.

For example, this config will also generate active and group-hover variants:

// tailwind.config.js
module.exports = {
 variants: {
    // ...
-   boxShadow: ['responsive', 'hover', 'focus'],
+   boxShadow: ['responsive', 'hover', 'focus', 'active', 'group-hover'],
 }
}

Disabling

If you don’t plan to use the box shadow utilities in your project, you can disable them entirely by setting the boxShadow property to false in the corePlugins section of your config file:

// tailwind.config.js
module.exports = {
 corePlugins: {
    // ...
+   boxShadow: false,
 }
}