View and change CSS
Complete these interactive tutorials to learn the basics of viewing and changing a page's CSS using Chrome DevTools.
View an element's CSS
Right-click the
Inspect me!
text below and select Inspect. The Elements panel of DevTools opens.Inspect me!
Observe the
Inspect me!
element highlighted in blue the DOM Tree.In the DOM Tree, find the value of the
data-message
attribute for theInspect me!
element.Enter the attribute's value in the text box below.
In the Elements > Styles pane, find the
aloha
class rule.The Styles pane lists the CSS rules being applied to whatever element is currently selected in the DOM Tree, which should still be the
Inspect me!
element.The
aloha
class is declaring a value forpadding
. Enter this value and its unit without spaces in the text box below.
If you'd like to dock your DevTools window to the right of your viewport, like on the screenshot in step one, see Change DevTools placement.
Add a CSS declaration to an element
Use the Styles pane when you want to change or add CSS declarations to an element.
Right-click the
Add a background color to me!
text below and select Inspect.Add a background color to me!
Click
element.style
near the top of the Styles pane.Type
background-color
and press Enter.Type
honeydew
and press Enter. In the DOM tree, you can see that an inline style declaration was applied to the element.
Add a CSS class to an element
Use the Styles pane to see how an element looks when a CSS class is applied to or removed from an element.
Right-click the
Add a class to me!
element below and select Inspect.Add a class to me!
Click .cls. DevTools reveals a text box where you can add classes to the selected element.
Type
color_me
in the Add new class text box and then press Enter. A checkbox appears below the Add new class text box, where you can toggle the class on and off. If theAdd a class to me!
element had any other classes applied to it, you'd also be able to toggle them from here.
Add a pseudostate to a class
Use the Styles pane to permanently apply a CSS pseudostate to an element. DevTools supports :active
, :focus
, :hover
, :visited
, and others.
Hover over the
Hover over me!
text below. The background color changes.Hover over me!
Right-click the
Hover over me!
text and select Inspect.In the Styles pane, click :hov.
Check the :hover checkbox. The background color changes like before, even though you're not actually hovering over the element.
Change the dimensions of an element
Use the Box Model interactive diagram in the Styles pane to change the width, height, padding, margin, or border length of an element.
Right-click the
Change my margin!
element below and select Inspect.Change my margin!
To see the Box Model, click the Show sidebar button in the action bar on the Styles pane.
In the Box Model diagram in the Styles pane, hover over padding. The element's padding is highlighted in the viewport.
Double-click the left margin in the Box Model. The element currently doesn't have margins, so the
left-margin
has a value of-
.Type
100
and press Enter.
The Box Model defaults to pixels, but it also accepts other values, such as 25%
, or 10vw
.
Alternatively, in rule declarations in the Styles pane, you can change length properties and their units with your pointer.