flex-shrink

The flex-shrink CSS property specifies the flex shrink factor of a flex item. Flex items will shrink to fill the container according to the flex-shrink number, when the default width of flex items is wider than the flex container.

flex-shrink: 2;
flex-shrink: 0.6;
/* Global values */
flex-shrink: inherit;
flex-shrink: initial;
flex-shrink: unset;

Initial value	`1`
Applies to	flex items, including in-flow pseudo-elements
Inherited	no
Media	visual
Computed value	as specified
Animation type	a number
Canonical order	the unique non-ambiguous order defined by the formal grammar

See Using CSS flexible boxes for more properties and information.

Syntax

The flex-shrink property is specified as a single <number>.

Values

<number>: See <number>. Negative values are invalid.

Formal syntax

<number>

Example

HTML

<p>The width of content is 500px; the flex-basis of the flex items is 120px.</p>
<p>A, B, C have flex-shrink:1 set. D and E have flex-shrink:2 set</p>
<p>The width of D and E is less than the others.</p>
<div id="content">
  <div class="box" style="background-color:red;">A</div>
  <div class="box" style="background-color:lightblue;">B</div>
  <div class="box" style="background-color:yellow;">C</div>
  <div class="box1" style="background-color:brown;">D</div>
  <div class="box1" style="background-color:lightgreen;">E</div>
</div>

CSS

#content {
  display: flex;
  width: 500px;
}
#content div {
  flex-basis: 120px;
  border: 3px solid rgba(0,0,0,.2);
}
.box { 
  flex-shrink: 1;
}
.box1 { 
  flex-shrink: 2; 
}

Result

Specifications

Specification	Status	Comment
CSS Flexible Box Layout Module The definition of 'flex-shrink' in that specification.	Candidate Recommendation	Initial definition

Feature	Firefox (Gecko)	Chrome	Edge	Internet Explorer	Opera	Safari
Basic support	18.0 (18.0)^[1] 32.0 (32.0)^[2]	21.0-webkit	(Yes)-webkit (Yes)	10^[3]	12.10	8.0-webkit

Feature	Firefox Mobile (Gecko)	Android	Edge	IE Phone	Opera Mobile	Safari Mobile
Basic support	18.0 (18.0)^[1] 32.0 (32.0)^[2]	?	(Yes)-webkit (Yes)	No support	12.10	No support

[1] Firefox supports only single-line flexbox until Firefox 27. To activate flexbox support, for Firefox 18 and 19, the user has to change the about:config preference layout.css.flexbox.enabled to true.

In addition to the unprefixed support, Gecko 48.0 (Firefox 48.0 / Thunderbird 48.0 / SeaMonkey 2.45) added support for a -webkit prefixed version of the property for web compatibility reasons behind the preference layout.css.prefixes.webkit, defaulting to false. Since Gecko 49.0 (Firefox 49.0 / Thunderbird 49.0 / SeaMonkey 2.46) the preference defaults to true.

[2] Before Firefox 32, Gecko wasn't able to animate values starting or stopping at 0(Spec, Demo).

[3] Internet Explorer 10 uses 0 instead of 1 as the initial value for the flex-shrink property. A workaround is to always set an explicit value for flex-shrink. See Flexbug #6 for more info.