prefers-contrast

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since May 2022.

The prefers-contrast CSS media feature is used to detect whether the user has requested the web content to be presented with a lower or higher contrast.

Syntax

no-preference: Indicates that the user has made no preference known to the system. This keyword value evaluates as false in the Boolean context.
more: Indicates that user has notified the system that they prefer an interface that has a higher level of contrast.
less: Indicates that user has notified the system that they prefer an interface that has a lower level of contrast.
custom: Indicates that user has notified the system for using a specific set of colors, and the contrast implied by these colors matches neither more nor less. This value will match the color palette specified by users of forced-colors: active.

User preferences

Various operating systems do support such preferences and user agents are likely to rely on the settings provided by the operating system.

Examples

This example has an annoying low contrast by default.

HTML

html

<div class="contrast">low contrast box</div>

CSS

css

.contrast {
  width: 100px;
  height: 100px;
  outline: 2px dashed black;
}

@media (prefers-contrast: more) {
  .contrast {
    outline: 2px solid black;
  }
}

Result

Specifications

Specification
Media Queries Level 5 # prefers-contrast

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser