Button

A button allows a user to perform an action, with mouse, touch, and keyboard interactions.

Example#

import {Button} from 'react-aria-components';

<Button onPress={() => alert('Hello world!')}>Press me</Button>

import {Button} from 'react-aria-components';

<Button onPress={() => alert('Hello world!')}>
  Press me
</Button>

import {Button} from 'react-aria-components';

<Button
  onPress={() =>
    alert(
      'Hello world!'
    )}
>
  Press me
</Button>

@import "@react-aria/example-theme";

.react-aria-Button {
  color: var(--text-color);
  background: var(--button-background);
  border: 1px solid var(--border-color);
  border-radius: 4px;
  appearance: none;
  vertical-align: middle;
  font-size: 1rem;
  text-align: center;
  margin: 0;
  outline: none;
  padding: 6px 10px;
  text-decoration: none;

  &[data-pressed] {
    box-shadow: inset 0 1px 2px rgb(0 0 0 / 0.1);
    background: var(--button-background-pressed);
    border-color: var(--border-color-pressed);
  }

  &[data-focus-visible] {
    outline: 2px solid var(--focus-ring-color);
    outline-offset: -1px;
  }
}

@import "@react-aria/example-theme";

.react-aria-Button {
  color: var(--text-color);
  background: var(--button-background);
  border: 1px solid var(--border-color);
  border-radius: 4px;
  appearance: none;
  vertical-align: middle;
  font-size: 1rem;
  text-align: center;
  margin: 0;
  outline: none;
  padding: 6px 10px;
  text-decoration: none;

  &[data-pressed] {
    box-shadow: inset 0 1px 2px rgb(0 0 0 / 0.1);
    background: var(--button-background-pressed);
    border-color: var(--border-color-pressed);
  }

  &[data-focus-visible] {
    outline: 2px solid var(--focus-ring-color);
    outline-offset: -1px;
  }
}

@import "@react-aria/example-theme";

.react-aria-Button {
  color: var(--text-color);
  background: var(--button-background);
  border: 1px solid var(--border-color);
  border-radius: 4px;
  appearance: none;
  vertical-align: middle;
  font-size: 1rem;
  text-align: center;
  margin: 0;
  outline: none;
  padding: 6px 10px;
  text-decoration: none;

  &[data-pressed] {
    box-shadow: inset 0 1px 2px rgb(0 0 0 / 0.1);
    background: var(--button-background-pressed);
    border-color: var(--border-color-pressed);
  }

  &[data-focus-visible] {
    outline: 2px solid var(--focus-ring-color);
    outline-offset: -1px;
  }
}

Features#

On the surface, building a custom styled button seems simple. However, there are many cross browser inconsistencies in interactions and accessibility features to consider. Button handles all of these interactions for you, so you can focus on the styling.

• Styleable – Hover, press, and keyboard focus states are provided for easy styling. These states only apply when interacting with an appropriate input device, unlike CSS pseudo classes.
• Accessible – Uses a native <button> element under the hood, with support for the Space and Enter keys.
• Cross-browser – Mouse, touch, keyboard, and focus interactions are normalized to ensure consistency across browsers and devices.

Read our blog post about the complexities of building buttons that work well across devices and interaction methods to learn more.

Anatomy#

Buttons consist of a clickable area usually containing a textual label or an icon that users can click to perform an action. In addition, keyboard users may activate buttons using the Space or Enter keys.

If a visual label is not provided (e.g. an icon only button), then an aria-label or aria-labelledby prop must be passed to identify the button to assistive technology.

Starter kits#

To help kick-start your project, we offer starter kits that include example implementations of all React Aria components with various styling solutions. All components are fully styled, including support for dark mode, high contrast mode, and all UI states. Each starter comes with a pre-configured Storybook that you can experiment with, or use as a starting point for your own component library.

Events#

Button supports user interactions via mouse, keyboard, and touch. You can handle all of these via the onPress prop. This is similar to the standard onClick event, but normalized to support all interaction methods equally. In addition, the onPressStart, onPressEnd, and onPressChange events are fired as the user interacts with the button.

Each of these handlers receives a PressEvent, which exposes information about the target and the type of event that triggered the interaction. See usePress for more details.

function Example() {
  let [pointerType, setPointerType] = React.useState('');

  return (
    <>
      <Button
        onPressStart={(e) => setPointerType(e.pointerType)}
        onPressEnd={() => setPointerType('')}
      >
        Press me
      </Button>
      <p>
        {pointerType
          ? `You are pressing the button with a ${pointerType}!`
          : 'Ready to be pressed.'}
      </p>
    </>
  );
}

function Example() {
  let [pointerType, setPointerType] = React.useState('');

  return (
    <>
      <Button
        onPressStart={(e) => setPointerType(e.pointerType)}
        onPressEnd={() => setPointerType('')}
      >
        Press me
      </Button>
      <p>
        {pointerType
          ? `You are pressing the button with a ${pointerType}!`
          : 'Ready to be pressed.'}
      </p>
    </>
  );
}

function Example() {
  let [
    pointerType,
    setPointerType
  ] = React.useState('');

  return (
    <>
      <Button
        onPressStart={(e) =>
          setPointerType(
            e.pointerType
          )}
        onPressEnd={() =>
          setPointerType(
            ''
          )}
      >
        Press me
      </Button>
      <p>
        {pointerType
          ? `You are pressing the button with a ${pointerType}!`
          : 'Ready to be pressed.'}
      </p>
    </>
  );
}

Disabled#

A Button can be disabled using the isDisabled prop.

<Button isDisabled>Pin</Button>

<Button isDisabled>Pin</Button>

<Button isDisabled>
  Pin
</Button>

.react-aria-Button {
  &[data-disabled]{
    border-color: var(--border-color-disabled);
    color: var(--text-color-disabled);
  }
}

.react-aria-Button {
  &[data-disabled]{
    border-color: var(--border-color-disabled);
    color: var(--text-color-disabled);
  }
}

.react-aria-Button {
  &[data-disabled]{
    border-color: var(--border-color-disabled);
    color: var(--text-color-disabled);
  }
}

Link buttons#

The Button component always represents a button semantically. To create a link that visually looks like a button, use the Link component instead. You can reuse the same styles you apply to the Button component on the Link.

import {Link} from 'react-aria-components';

<Link className="react-aria-Button" href="https://adobe.com/" target="_blank">
  Adobe
</Link>

import {Link} from 'react-aria-components';

<Link
  className="react-aria-Button"
  href="https://adobe.com/"
  target="_blank"
>
  Adobe
</Link>

import {Link} from 'react-aria-components';

<Link
  className="react-aria-Button"
  href="https://adobe.com/"
  target="_blank"
>
  Adobe
</Link>

Props#

Styling#

React Aria components can be styled in many ways, including using CSS classes, inline styles, utility classes (e.g. Tailwind), CSS-in-JS (e.g. Styled Components), etc. By default, all components include a builtin className attribute which can be targeted using CSS selectors. These follow the react-aria-ComponentName naming convention.

.react-aria-Button {
  /* ... */
}

.react-aria-Button {
  /* ... */
}

.react-aria-Button {
  /* ... */
}

A custom className can also be specified on any component. This overrides the default className provided by React Aria with your own.

<Button className="my-button">
  {/* ... */}
</Button>

<Button className="my-button">
  {/* ... */}
</Button>

<Button className="my-button">
  {/* ... */}
</Button>

In addition, some components support multiple UI states (e.g. focused, placeholder, readonly, etc.). React Aria components expose states using data attributes, which you can target in CSS selectors. For example:

.react-aria-Button[data-pressed] {
  /* ... */
}

.react-aria-Button[data-pressed] {
  /* ... */
}

.react-aria-Button[data-pressed] {
  /* ... */
}

The className and style props also accept functions which receive states for styling. This lets you dynamically determine the classes or styles to apply, which is useful when using utility CSS libraries like Tailwind.

<Button
  className={({ isPressed }) => isPressed ? 'bg-gray-700' : 'bg-gray-600'}
/>

<Button
  className={({ isPressed }) =>
    isPressed ? 'bg-gray-700' : 'bg-gray-600'}
/>

<Button
  className={(
    { isPressed }
  ) =>
    isPressed
      ? 'bg-gray-700'
      : 'bg-gray-600'}
/>

Render props may also be used as children to alter what elements are rendered based on the current state. For example, you could render an extra element when the button is in a pressed state.

<Button>
  {({isPressed}) => (
    <>
      {isPressed && <PressHighlight />}
      Press me
    </>
  )}
</Button>

<Button>
  {({isPressed}) => (
    <>
      {isPressed && <PressHighlight />}
      Press me
    </>
  )}
</Button>

<Button>
  {({ isPressed }) => (
    <>
      {isPressed && (
        <PressHighlight />
      )}
      Press me
    </>
  )}
</Button>

The states, selectors, and render props for Button are documented below.

Advanced customization#

Contexts#

All React Aria Components export a corresponding context that can be used to send props to them from a parent element. This enables you to build your own compositional APIs similar to those found in React Aria Components itself. You can send any prop or ref via context that you could pass to the corresponding component. The local props and ref on the component are merged with the ones passed via context, with the local props taking precedence (following the rules documented in mergeProps).

This example shows a ButtonGroup component that renders a group of buttons. The entire group can be marked as disabled via the isDisabled prop, which is passed to all child buttons via the ButtonContext provider.

import {ButtonContext} from 'react-aria-components';

interface ButtonGroupProps {
  children?: React.ReactNode,
  isDisabled?: boolean
}

function ButtonGroup({children, isDisabled}: ButtonGroupProps) {
  return (
    <div style={{display: 'flex', gap: 8}}>
      <ButtonContext.Provider value={{isDisabled}}>        {children}
      </ButtonContext.Provider>
    </div>
  );
}

<ButtonGroup isDisabled>
  <Button>Save</Button>
  <Button>Publish</Button>
</ButtonGroup>

import {ButtonContext} from 'react-aria-components';

interface ButtonGroupProps {
  children?: React.ReactNode;
  isDisabled?: boolean;
}

function ButtonGroup(
  { children, isDisabled }: ButtonGroupProps
) {
  return (
    <div style={{ display: 'flex', gap: 8 }}>
      <ButtonContext.Provider value={{ isDisabled }}>        {children}
      </ButtonContext.Provider>
    </div>
  );
}

<ButtonGroup isDisabled>
  <Button>Save</Button>
  <Button>Publish</Button>
</ButtonGroup>

import {ButtonContext} from 'react-aria-components';

interface ButtonGroupProps {
  children?:
    React.ReactNode;
  isDisabled?: boolean;
}

function ButtonGroup(
  {
    children,
    isDisabled
  }: ButtonGroupProps
) {
  return (
    <div
      style={{
        display: 'flex',
        gap: 8
      }}
    >
      <ButtonContext.Provider
        value={{
          isDisabled
        }}
      >        {children}
      </ButtonContext.Provider>
    </div>
  );
}

<ButtonGroup
  isDisabled
>
  <Button>Save</Button>
  <Button>
    Publish
  </Button>
</ButtonGroup>

Hooks#

If you need to customize things further, such as intercepting events or customizing DOM elements, you can drop down to the lower level Hook-based API. Consume from ButtonContext in your component with useContextProps to make it compatible with other React Aria Components. See useButton for more details.

This example uses Framer Motion to create an AnimatedButton component that animates based on the isPressed state provided by useButton. It can be used standalone or as a part of any React Aria component.

import type {ButtonProps} from 'react-aria-components';
import {ButtonContext, useContextProps} from 'react-aria-components';
import {useButton} from 'react-aria';
import {motion} from 'framer-motion';

const AnimatedButton = React.forwardRef(
  (props: ButtonProps, ref: React.ForwardedRef<HTMLButtonElement>) => {
    // Merge the local props and ref with the ones provided via context.
    [props, ref] = useContextProps(props, ref, ButtonContext);
    let { buttonProps, isPressed } = useButton(props, ref);
    return (
      <motion.button
        {...buttonProps}
        ref={ref}
        animate={{
          scale: isPressed ? 0.9 : 1
        }}
      >
        {props.children}
      </motion.button>
    );
  }
);

import type {ButtonProps} from 'react-aria-components';
import {
  ButtonContext,
  useContextProps
} from 'react-aria-components';
import {useButton} from 'react-aria';
import {motion} from 'framer-motion';

const AnimatedButton = React.forwardRef(
  (
    props: ButtonProps,
    ref: React.ForwardedRef<HTMLButtonElement>
  ) => {
    // Merge the local props and ref with the ones provided via context.
    [props, ref] = useContextProps(
      props,
      ref,
      ButtonContext
    );
    let { buttonProps, isPressed } = useButton(props, ref);
    return (
      <motion.button
        {...buttonProps}
        ref={ref}
        animate={{
          scale: isPressed ? 0.9 : 1
        }}
      >
        {props.children}
      </motion.button>
    );
  }
);

import type {ButtonProps} from 'react-aria-components';
import {
  ButtonContext,
  useContextProps
} from 'react-aria-components';
import {useButton} from 'react-aria';
import {motion} from 'framer-motion';

const AnimatedButton =
  React.forwardRef(
    (
      props: ButtonProps,
      ref:
        React.ForwardedRef<
          HTMLButtonElement
        >
    ) => {
      // Merge the local props and ref with the ones provided via context.
      [props, ref] =
        useContextProps(
          props,
          ref,
          ButtonContext
        );
      let {
        buttonProps,
        isPressed
      } = useButton(
        props,
        ref
      );
      return (
        <motion.button
          {...buttonProps}
          ref={ref}
          animate={{
            scale:
              isPressed
                ? 0.9
                : 1
          }}
        >
          {props
            .children}
        </motion.button>
      );
    }
  );