<head>: The Document Metadata (Header) element

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

The <head> HTML element contains machine-readable information (metadata) about the document, like its title, scripts, and style sheets. There can be only one <head> element in an HTML document.

Note: <head> primarily holds information for machine processing, not human-readability. For human-visible information, like top-level headings and listed authors, see the <header> element.

Attributes

This element includes the global attributes.

profile Deprecated

The URIs of one or more metadata profiles, separated by white space.

Examples

html
<!doctype html>
<html lang="en-US">
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width" />
    <title>Document title</title>
  </head>
</html>

Technical summary

Content categories None.
Permitted content

If the document is an <iframe> srcdoc document, or if title information is available from a higher level protocol (like the subject line in HTML email), zero or more elements of metadata content.

Otherwise, one or more elements of metadata content where exactly one is a <title> element.

Tag omission The start tag may be omitted if the first thing inside the <head> element is an element.
The end tag may be omitted if the first thing following the <head> element is not a space character or a comment.
Permitted parents An <html> element, as its first child.
Implicit ARIA role No corresponding role
Permitted ARIA roles No role permitted
DOM interface HTMLHeadElement

Specifications

Specification
HTML
# the-head-element

Browser compatibility

Report problems with this compatibility data on GitHub
desktopmobile
Chrome
Edge
Firefox
Opera
Safari
Chrome Android
Firefox for Android
Opera Android
Safari on iOS
Samsung Internet
WebView Android
WebView on iOS
head
profile
Deprecated

Legend

Tip: you can click/tap on a cell for more information.

Full support
Full support
No support
No support
Deprecated. Not for use in new websites.

See also