The HTML <meta>
element represents metadata that cannot be represented by other HTML meta-related elements, like <base>
, <link>
, <script>
, <style>
or <title>
.
Content categories | Metadata content. If the itemprop attribute is present: flow content, phrasing content. |
---|---|
Permitted content | None, it is an empty element. |
Tag omission | As it is a void element, the start tag must be present and the end tag must not be present. |
Permitted parents | <meta charset> , <meta http-equiv> : a <head> element. If the http-equiv is not an encoding declaration, it can also be inside a <noscript> element, itself inside a <head> element. |
Permitted ARIA roles | None |
DOM interface | HTMLMetaElement |
Attributes
This element includes the global attributes.
Note: the global attribute name
has a specific meaning for the <meta>
element, and the itemprop
attribute must not be set on the same <meta>
element that has any existing name
, http-equiv
or charset
attributes.
charset
- This attribute declares the page's character encoding. It must contain a standard IANA MIME name for character encodings. Although the standard doesn't request a specific encoding, it suggests:
- Authors are encouraged to use
UTF-8
. - Authors should not use ASCII-incompatible encodings to avoid security risk: browsers not supporting them may interpret harmful content as HTML. This happens with the
JIS_C6226-1983
,JIS_X0212-1990
,HZ-GB-2312
,JOHAB
, the ISO-2022 family and the EBCDIC family.
Note: ASCII-incompatible encodings are those that don't map the 8-bit code points
0x20
to0x7E
to the0x0020
to0x007E
Unicode code points)- Authors must not use
CESU-8
,UTF-7
,BOCU-1
and/orSCSU
as cross-site scripting attacks with these encodings have been demonstrated. - Authors should not use
UTF-32
because not all HTML5 encoding algorithms can distinguish it fromUTF-16
.
Notes:- The declared character encoding must match the one the page was saved with to avoid garbled characters and security holes.
- The
<meta>
element declaring the encoding must be inside the<head>
element and within the first 1024 bytes of the HTML as some browsers only look at those bytes before choosing an encoding. - This
<meta>
element is only one part of the algorithm to determine a page's character set. TheContent-Type
header and any Byte-Order Marks override this element. - It is strongly recommended to define the character encoding. If a page's encoding is undefined, cross-scripting techniques are possible, such as the
UTF-7
fallback cross-scripting technique. - The
<meta>
element with acharset
attribute is a synonym for the pre-HTML5<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=IANAcharset">
, whereIANAcharset
contains the value of the equivalentcharset
attribute. This syntax is still allowed, although no longer recommended.
- Authors are encouraged to use
content
- This attribute contains the value for the
http-equiv
orname
attribute, depending on which is used. http-equiv
- Defines a pragma directive. The attribute is named
http-equiv(alent)
because all the allowed values are names of particular HTTP headers:"content-language"
Defines the default language of the page. It can be overridden by the lang attribute on any element.Warning: Do not use this value, as it is obsolete. Prefer the
lang
attribute on the<html>
element."content-security-policy"
Allows page authors to define a content policy for the current page. Content policies mostly specify allowed server origins and script endpoints which help guard against cross-site scripting attacks."content-type"
Defines the MIME type of the document, followed by its character encoding. It follows the same syntax as the HTTPcontent-type
entity-header field, but as it is inside a HTML page, most values other thantext/html
are impossible. Therefore the valid syntax for itscontent
is the string 'text/html
' followed by a character set with the following syntax: '; charset=IANAcharset
', whereIANAcharset
is the preferred MIME name for a character set as defined by the IANA.Note: As
<meta>
can't change documents' types in XHTML or HTML5's XHTML serialization, never set the MIME type to an XHTML MIME type with<meta>
."refresh"
This instruction specifies:"set-cookie"
Defines a cookie for the page. Its content must follow the syntax defined in the IETF HTTP Cookie Specification.Warning: Do not use this instruction, as it is obsolete. Use the HTTP header
Set-Cookie
instead.
name
-
This attribute defines the name of a piece of document-level metadata. It should not be set if one of the attributes
itemprop
,http-equiv
orcharset
is also set.This metadata name is associated with the value contained by the
content
attribute. The possible values for the name attribute are:application-name
which defines the name of the application running in the web page.Note:- Browsers may use this to identify the application. It is different from the
<title>
element, which usually contain the application name, but may also contain information like the document name or a status. - Simple web pages shouldn't define an application-name.
- Browsers may use this to identify the application. It is different from the
author
which defines the name of the document's author.description
which contains a short and accurate summary of the content of the page. Several browsers, like Firefox and Opera, use this as the default description of bookmarked pages.generator
which contains the identifier of the software that generated the page.keywords
which contains words relevant to the page's content separated by commas.referrer
which controls theReferer
HTTP header attached to requests sent from the document:Values for the content
attribute of<meta name="referrer">
no-referrer
Do not send a HTTP Referrer
header.origin
Send the origin of the document. no-referrer-when-downgrade
Send the origin as a referrer to URLs as secure as the current page, (https→https), but does not send a referrer to less secure URLs (https→http). This is the default behaviour. origin-when-cross-origin
Send the full URL (stripped of parameters) for same-origin requests, but only send the origin for other cases. same-origin
A referrer will be sent for same-site origins, but cross-origin requests will contain no referrer information. strict-origin
Only send the origin of the document as the referrer to a-priori as-much-secure destination (HTTPS->HTTPS), but don't send it to a less secure destination (HTTPS->HTTP). strict-origin-when-cross-origin
Send a full URL when performing a same-origin request, only send the origin of the document to a-priori as-much-secure destination (HTTPS->HTTPS), and send no header to a less secure destination (HTTPS->HTTP). unsafe-URL
Send the full URL (stripped of parameters) for same-origin or cross-origin requests. Notes:
- Some browsers support the deprecated values of
always
,default
, andnever
for referrer. - Dynamically inserting
<meta name="referrer">
(withdocument.write
orappendChild
) makes the referrer behaviour unpredictable. - When several conflicting policies are defined, the no-referrer policy is applied.
- Some browsers support the deprecated values of
This attribute may also have a value taken from the extended list defined on WHATWG Wiki MetaExtensions page. Although none have been formally accepted yet, a few commonly used names are:
creator
which defines the name of the creator of the document, such as an organization or institution. If there are more than one, several<meta>
elements should be used.googlebot
, a synonym ofrobots
, is only followed by Googlebot (the indexing crawler for Google).publisher
which defines the name of the document's publisher.robots
which defines the behaviour that cooperative crawlers, or "robots", should use with the page. It is a comma-separated list of the values below:Values for the content of <meta name="robots">
Value Description Used by index
Allows the robot to index the page (default). All noindex
Requests the robot to not index the page. All follow
Allows the robot to follow the links on the page (default). All nofollow
Requests the robot to not follow the links on the page. All none
Equivalent to noindex, nofollow
Google noodp
Prevents using the Open Directory Project description, if any, as the page description in search engine results. noarchive
Requests the search engine not to cache the page content. Google, Yahoo, Bing nosnippet
Prevents displaying any description of the page in search engine results. Google, Bing noimageindex
Requests this page not to appear as the referring page of an indexed image. Google nocache
Synonym of noarchive
.Bing Notes:- Only cooperative robots follow these rules. Do not expect to prevent e-mail harvesters with them.
- The robot still needs to access the page in order to read these rules. To prevent bandwidth consumption, use a robots.txt file.
- If you want to remove a page,
noindex
will work, but only after the robot visits the page again. Ensure that therobots.txt
file is not preventing revisits. - Some values are mutually exclusive, like
index
andnoindex
, orfollow
andnofollow
. In these cases the robot's behaviour is undefined and may vary between them. - Some crawler robots, like Google, Yahoo and Bing, support the same values for the HTTP header
X-Robots-Tag
; this allows non-HTML documents like images to use these rules.
slurp
, is a synonym ofrobots
, but only for Slurp - the crawler for Yahoo Search.viewport
, which gives hints about the size of the initial size of the viewport. Used by mobile devices only.Values for the content of <meta name="viewport">
Value Possible subvalues Description width
A positive integer number, or the text device-width
Defines the pixel width of the viewport that you want the web site to be rendered at. height
A positive integer, or the text device-height
Defines the height of the viewport. Not used by any browser. initial-scale
A positive number between 0.0
and10.0
Defines the ratio between the device width ( device-width
in portrait mode ordevice-height
in landscape mode) and the viewport size.maximum-scale
A positive number between 0.0
and10.0
Defines the maximum amount to zoom in. It must be greater or equal to the minimum-scale
or the behaviour is undefined. Browser settings can ignore this rule and iOS10+ ignores it by default.minimum-scale
A positive number between 0.0
and10.0
Defines the minimum zoom level. It must be smaller or equal to the maximum-scale
or the behaviour is undefined. Browser settings can ignore this rule and iOS10+ ignores it by default.user-scalable
yes
orno
If set to no
, the user is not able to zoom in the webpage. The default isyes
. Browser settings can ignore this rule, and iOS10+ ignores it by default.Specification Status Comment CSS Device Adaptation
The definition of '<meta name="viewport">' in that specification.Working Draft Non-normatively describes the Viewport META element See also:@viewport
Notes:- Though unstandardized, this declaration is respected by most mobile browsers due to de-facto dominance.
- The default values may vary between devices and browsers.
- To learn about this declaration in Firefox for Mobile, see this article.
scheme
- This attribute defines the scheme in which metadata is described. A scheme is a context leading to the correct interpretations of the
content
value, like a format.Warning: Do not use this value, as it is obsolete. There is no replacement as there was no real usage for it.
Notes
Depending on the attributes set, the kind of metadata can be one of the following:
- If
name
is set, it is document-level metadata, applying to the whole page. - If
http-equiv
is set, it is a pragma directive — information normally given by the web server about how the web page is served. - If
charset
is set, it is a charset declaration — the character encoding used by the webpage. - If
itemprop
is set, it is user-defined metadata — transparent for the user-agent as the semantics of the metadata is user-specific.
Examples
<meta charset="utf-8">
<!-- Redirect page after 3 seconds -->
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="3;url=https://www.mozilla.org">
Accessibility concerns
Refreshing content
Pages set with a refresh
value run the risk of having the time interval being too short. People navigating with the aid of assistive technology such as a screen reader may be unable to read through and understand the page's content before being automatically redirected. The abrupt, unannounced updating of the page content may also be disorienting for people experiencing low vision conditions.
- MDN Understanding WCAG, Guideline 2.1 explanations
- MDN Understanding WCAG, Guideline 3.1 explanations
- Understanding Success Criterion 2.2.1 | W3C Understanding WCAG 2.0
- Understanding Success Criterion 2.2.4 | W3C Understanding WCAG 2.0
- Understanding Success Criterion 3.2.5 | W3C Understanding WCAG 2.0
Viewport scaling
Disabling zooming capabilities by setting user-scalable
to a value of no
prevents people experiencing low vision conditions from being able to read and understand page content.
Specifications
Specification | Status | Comment |
---|---|---|
Referrer Policy The definition of '<meta name="referrer">' in that specification. |
Candidate Recommendation | Defines values and semantics of <meta name="referrer"> . |
HTML Living Standard The definition of '<meta>' in that specification. |
Living Standard | Added itemprop attribute |
HTML5 The definition of '<meta>' in that specification. |
Recommendation | Added charset attribute |
HTML 4.01 Specification The definition of '<meta>' in that specification. |
Recommendation |
Browser compatibility
BCD tables only load in the browser
The information shown below has been pulled from MDN's Github (https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data).
The compatibility table in this page is generated from structured data. If you'd like to contribute to the data, please check out https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data and send us a pull request.