Toasts

Push notifications to your visitors with a toast, a lightweight and easily customizable alert message.

On this page

Toasts are lightweight notifications designed to mimic the push notifications that have been popularized by mobile and desktop operating systems. They’re built with flexbox, so they’re easy to align and position.

Overview

Things to know when using the toast plugin:

Toasts are opt-in for performance reasons, so you must initialize them yourself.
Toasts will automatically hide if you do not specify autohide: false.

The animation effect of this component is dependent on the prefers-reduced-motion media query. See the reduced motion section of our accessibility documentation.

Examples

Basic

To encourage extensible and predictable toasts, we recommend a header and body. Toast headers use display: flex, allowing easy alignment of content thanks to our margin and flexbox utilities.

Toasts are as flexible as you need and have very little required markup. At a minimum, we require a single element to contain your “toasted” content and strongly encourage a dismiss button.

Hello, world! This is a toast message.

html

<div class="toast" role="alert" aria-live="assertive" aria-atomic="true">
  <div class="toast-header">
    <img src="..." class="me-2" alt="...">
    <strong class="me-auto">Boosted Innovation Cup</strong>
    <small>11 mins ago</small>
    <button type="button" class="btn-close ms-2" data-bs-dismiss="toast"><span class="visually-hidden">Close</span></button>
  </div>
  <div class="toast-body">
    Hello, world! This is a toast message.
  </div>
</div>

Previously, our scripts dynamically added the .hide class to completely hide a toast (with display:none, rather than just with opacity:0). This is now not necessary anymore. However, for backwards compatibility, our script will continue to toggle the class (even though there is no practical need for it).

Live example

Click the button below to show a toast (positioned with our utilities in the lower right corner) that has been hidden by default.

Hello, world! This is a toast message.

<button type="button" class="btn btn-primary" id="liveToastBtn">Show live toast</button>

<div class="toast-container position-fixed bottom-0 end-0 p-3">
  <div id="liveToast" class="toast" role="alert" aria-live="assertive" aria-atomic="true">
    <div class="toast-header">
      <img src="..." class="rounded me-2" alt="...">
      <strong class="me-auto">Boosted Innovation Cup</strong>
      <small>11 mins ago</small>
      <button type="button" class="btn-close" data-bs-dismiss="toast"><span class="visually-hidden">Close</span></button>
    </div>
    <div class="toast-body">
      Hello, world! This is a toast message.
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

We use the following JavaScript to trigger our live toast demo:

const toastTrigger = document.getElementById('liveToastBtn')
const toastLiveExample = document.getElementById('liveToast')
if (toastTrigger) {
  toastTrigger.addEventListener('click', () => {
    const toast = new boosted.Toast(toastLiveExample)

    toast.show()
  })
}

Translucent

Toasts are slightly translucent to blend in with what’s below them.

Hello, world! This is a toast message.

html

<div class="toast" role="alert" aria-live="assertive" aria-atomic="true">
  <div class="toast-header">
    <img src="..." class="me-2" alt="...">
    <strong class="me-auto">Boosted Innovation Cup</strong>
    <small>11 mins ago</small>
    <button type="button" class="btn-close ms-2" data-bs-dismiss="toast"><span class="visually-hidden">Close</span></button>
  </div>
  <div class="toast-body">
    Hello, world! This is a toast message.
  </div>
</div>

Stacking

You can stack toasts by wrapping them in a toast container, which will vertically add some spacing.

See? Just like this.

Heads up, toasts will stack automatically

html

<div class="toast-container position-static">
  <div class="toast" role="alert" aria-live="assertive" aria-atomic="true">
    <div class="toast-header">
      <img src="..." class="me-2" alt="...">
      <strong class="me-auto">Boosted Innovation Cup</strong>
      <small>just now</small>
      <button type="button" class="btn-close ms-2" data-bs-dismiss="toast"><span class="visually-hidden">Close</span></button>
    </div>
    <div class="toast-body">
      See? Just like this.
    </div>
  </div>

  <div class="toast" role="alert" aria-live="assertive" aria-atomic="true">
    <div class="toast-header">
      <img src="..." class="me-2" alt="...">
      <strong class="me-auto">Boosted Innovation Cup</strong>
      <small>2 seconds ago</small>
      <button type="button" class="btn-close ms-2" data-bs-dismiss="toast"><span class="visually-hidden">Close</span></button>
    </div>
    <div class="toast-body">
      Heads up, toasts will stack automatically
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

Custom content

Customize your toasts by removing sub-components, tweaking them with utilities, or by adding your own markup. Here we’ve created a simpler toast by removing the default .toast-header, adding a custom hide icon from Bootstrap icons, and using some flexbox utilities to adjust the layout.

Hello, world! This is a toast message.

html

<div class="toast align-items-center" role="alert" aria-live="assertive" aria-atomic="true">
  <div class="d-flex">
    <div class="toast-body my-auto">
      Hello, world! This is a toast message.
    </div>
    <button type="button" class="btn-close ms-auto" data-bs-dismiss="toast"><span class="visually-hidden">Close</span></button>
  </div>
</div>

Alternatively, you can also add additional controls and components to toasts.

Hello, world! This is a toast message.

html

<div class="toast" role="alert" aria-live="assertive" aria-atomic="true">
  <div class="toast-body">
    Hello, world! This is a toast message.
    <div class="mt-2 pt-2 border-top">
      <button type="button" class="btn btn-primary btn-sm">Take action</button>
      <button type="button" class="btn btn-secondary btn-sm" data-bs-dismiss="toast">Close</button>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

Color schemes

Building on the above example, you can create different toast color schemes with our color and background utilities. Here we’ve added .text-bg-secondary to the .toast, and then added .btn-close-white to our close button. For a crisp edge, we remove the default border with .border-0.

Hello, world! This is a toast message.

html

<div class="toast align-items-center text-bg-secondary border-0" role="alert" aria-live="assertive" aria-atomic="true">
  <div class="d-flex">
    <div class="toast-body my-auto">
      Hello, world! This is a toast message.
    </div>
    <button type="button" class="btn-close btn-close-white ms-auto" data-bs-dismiss="toast"><span class="visually-hidden">Close</span></button>
  </div>
</div>

Placement

Place toasts with custom CSS as you need them. The top right is often used for notifications, as is the top middle. If you’re only ever going to show one toast at a time, put the positioning styles right on the .toast.

Hello, world! This is a toast message.

html

<form>
  <div class="mb-3">
    <label for="selectToastPlacement">Toast placement</label>
    <select class="form-select mt-2" id="selectToastPlacement">
      <option value="" selected>Select a position...</option>
      <option value="top-0 start-0">Top left</option>
      <option value="top-0 start-50 translate-middle-x">Top center</option>
      <option value="top-0 end-0">Top right</option>
      <option value="top-50 start-0 translate-middle-y">Middle left</option>
      <option value="top-50 start-50 translate-middle">Middle center</option>
      <option value="top-50 end-0 translate-middle-y">Middle right</option>
      <option value="bottom-0 start-0">Bottom left</option>
      <option value="bottom-0 start-50 translate-middle-x">Bottom center</option>
      <option value="bottom-0 end-0">Bottom right</option>
    </select>
  </div>
</form>
<div aria-live="polite" aria-atomic="true" class="bg-dark position-relative bd-example-toasts">
  <div class="toast-container p-3" id="toastPlacement">
    <div class="toast">
      <div class="toast-header">
        <img src="..." class="me-2" alt="...">
        <strong class="me-auto">Boosted Innovation Cup</strong>
        <small>11 mins ago</small>
      </div>
      <div class="toast-body">
        Hello, world! This is a toast message.
      </div>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

For systems that generate more notifications, consider using a wrapping element so they can easily stack.

See? Just like this.

Heads up, toasts will stack automatically

html

<div aria-live="polite" aria-atomic="true" class="position-relative">
  <!-- Position it: -->
  <!-- - `.toast-container` for spacing between toasts -->
  <!-- - `top-0` & `end-0` to position the toasts in the upper right corner -->
  <!-- - `.p-3` to prevent the toasts from sticking to the edge of the container  -->
  <div class="toast-container top-0 end-0 p-3">

    <!-- Then put toasts within -->
    <div class="toast" role="alert" aria-live="assertive" aria-atomic="true">
      <div class="toast-header">
        <img src="..." class="me-2" alt="...">
        <strong class="me-auto">Boosted Innovation Cup</strong>
        <small>just now</small>
        <button type="button" class="btn-close ms-2" data-bs-dismiss="toast"><span class="visually-hidden">Close</span></button>
      </div>
      <div class="toast-body">
        See? Just like this.
      </div>
    </div>

    <div class="toast" role="alert" aria-live="assertive" aria-atomic="true">
      <div class="toast-header">
        <img src="..." class="me-2" alt="...">
        <strong class="me-auto">Boosted Innovation Cup</strong>
        <small>2 seconds ago</small>
        <button type="button" class="btn-close ms-2" data-bs-dismiss="toast"><span class="visually-hidden">Close</span></button>
      </div>
      <div class="toast-body">
        Heads up, toasts will stack automatically
      </div>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

You can also get fancy with flexbox utilities to align toasts horizontally and/or vertically.

Hello, world! This is a toast message.

html

<!-- Flexbox container for aligning the toasts -->
<div aria-live="polite" aria-atomic="true" class="d-flex justify-content-center align-items-center w-100">

  <!-- Then put toasts within -->
  <div class="toast" role="alert" aria-live="assertive" aria-atomic="true">
    <div class="toast-header">
      <img src="..." class="me-2" alt="...">
      <strong class="me-auto">Boosted Innovation Cup</strong>
      <small>11 mins ago</small>
      <button type="button" class="btn-close ms-2" data-bs-dismiss="toast"><span class="visually-hidden">Close</span></button>
    </div>
    <div class="toast-body">
      Hello, world! This is a toast message.
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

Accessibility

Toasts are intended to be small interruptions to your visitors or users, so to help those with screen readers and similar assistive technologies, you should wrap your toasts in an aria-live region. Changes to live regions (such as injecting/updating a toast component) are automatically announced by screen readers without needing to move the user’s focus or otherwise interrupt the user. Additionally, include aria-atomic="true" to ensure that the entire toast is always announced as a single (atomic) unit, rather than just announcing what was changed (which could lead to problems if you only update part of the toast’s content, or if displaying the same toast content at a later point in time). If the information needed is important for the process, e.g. for a list of errors in a form, then use the alert component instead of toast.

Note that the live region needs to be present in the markup before the toast is generated or updated. If you dynamically generate both at the same time and inject them into the page, they will generally not be announced by assistive technologies.

You also need to adapt the role and aria-live level depending on the content. If it’s an important message like an error, use role="alert" aria-live="assertive", otherwise use role="status" aria-live="polite" attributes.

As the content you’re displaying changes, be sure to update the delay timeout so that users have enough time to read the toast.

<div class="toast" role="alert" aria-live="polite" aria-atomic="true" data-bs-delay="10000">
  <div role="alert" aria-live="assertive" aria-atomic="true">...</div>
</div>

When using autohide: false, you must add a close button to allow users to dismiss the toast.

Hello, world! This is a toast message.

html

<div role="alert" aria-live="assertive" aria-atomic="true" class="toast" data-bs-autohide="false">
  <div class="toast-header">
    <img src="..." class="me-2" alt="...">
    <strong class="me-auto">Boosted Innovation Cup</strong>
    <small>11 mins ago</small>
    <button type="button" class="btn-close ms-2" data-bs-dismiss="toast"><span class="visually-hidden">Close</span></button>
  </div>
  <div class="toast-body">
    Hello, world! This is a toast message.
  </div>
</div>

While technically it’s possible to add focusable/actionable controls (such as additional buttons or links) in your toast, you should avoid doing this for autohiding toasts. Even if you give the toast a long delay timeout, keyboard and assistive technology users may find it difficult to reach the toast in time to take action (since toasts don’t receive focus when they are displayed). If you absolutely must have further controls, we recommend using a toast with autohide: false.

CSS

Variables

As part of Boosted Innovation Cup’s evolving CSS variables approach, toasts now use local CSS variables on .toast for enhanced real-time customization. Values for the CSS variables are set via Sass, so Sass customization is still supported, too.

  --#{$prefix}toast-zindex: #{$zindex-toast};
  --#{$prefix}toast-padding-x: #{$toast-padding-x};
  --#{$prefix}toast-padding-y: #{$toast-padding-y};
  --#{$prefix}toast-spacing: #{$toast-spacing};
  --#{$prefix}toast-max-width: #{$toast-max-width};
  @include rfs($toast-font-size, --#{$prefix}toast-font-size);
  --#{$prefix}toast-color: #{$toast-color};
  --#{$prefix}toast-bg: #{$toast-background-color};
  --#{$prefix}toast-border-width: #{$toast-border-width};
  --#{$prefix}toast-border-color: #{$toast-border-color};
  --#{$prefix}toast-border-radius: #{$toast-border-radius};
  --#{$prefix}toast-box-shadow: #{$toast-box-shadow};
  --#{$prefix}toast-header-color: #{$toast-header-color};
  --#{$prefix}toast-header-bg: #{$toast-header-background-color};
  --#{$prefix}toast-header-border-color: #{$toast-header-border-color};

Sass variables

$toast-max-width:                   21.875rem;
$toast-padding-x:                   $spacer * .5;
$toast-padding-y:                   $spacer * .25;
$toast-font-size:                   .875rem;
$toast-color:                       $black;
$toast-background-color:            rgba($white, .85);
$toast-border-width:                $border-width;
$toast-border-color:                var(--#{$prefix}border-color-translucent); // Boosted mod
$toast-border-radius:               $border-radius;
$toast-box-shadow:                  $box-shadow;
$toast-spacing:                     $container-padding-x;

$toast-header-color:                null;
$toast-header-background-color:     rgba($white, .85);
$toast-header-border-color:         rgba($black, .05);

Usage

Initialize toasts via JavaScript:

const toastElList = document.querySelectorAll('.toast')
const toastList = [...toastElList].map(toastEl => new boosted.Toast(toastEl, option))

Triggers

Dismissal can be achieved with the data attribute on a button within the toast as demonstrated below:

<button type="button" class="btn-close" data-bs-dismiss="toast"><span class="visually-hidden">Close</span></button>

or on a button outside the toast using the data-bs-target as demonstrated below:

<button type="button" class="btn-close" data-bs-dismiss="toast" data-bs-target="#my-toast"><span class="visually-hidden">Close</span></button>

Options

As options can be passed via data attributes or JavaScript, you can append an option name to data-bs-, as in data-bs-animation="{value}". Make sure to change the case type of the option name from “camelCase” to “kebab-case” when passing the options via data attributes. For example, use data-bs-custom-class="beautifier" instead of data-bs-customClass="beautifier".

All components support an experimental reserved data attribute data-bs-config that can house simple component configuration as a JSON string. When an element has data-bs-config='{"delay":0, "title":123}' and data-bs-title="456" attributes, the final title value will be 456 and the separate data attributes will override values given on data-bs-config. In addition, existing data attributes are able to house JSON values like data-bs-delay='{"show":0,"hide":150}'.

Name	Type	Default	Description
`animation`	boolean	`true`	Apply a CSS fade transition to the toast.
`autohide`	boolean	`true`	Automatically hide the toast after the delay.
`delay`	number	`5000`	Delay in milliseconds before hiding the toast.

Methods

Asynchronous methods and transitions

All API methods are asynchronous and start a transition. They return to the caller as soon as the transition is started but before it ends. In addition, a method call on a transitioning component will be ignored.

See our JavaScript documentation for more information.

Method	Description
`dispose`	Hides an element’s toast. Your toast will remain on the DOM but won’t show anymore.
`getInstance`	Static method which allows you to get the toast instance associated with a DOM element. For example: `const myToastEl = document.getElementById('myToastEl')` `const myToast = boosted.Toast.getInstance(myToastEl)` Returns a Boosted Innovation Cup toast instance.
`getOrCreateInstance`	Static method which allows you to get the toast instance associated with a DOM element, or create a new one, in case it wasn’t initialized. `const myToastEl = document.getElementById('myToastEl')` `const myToast = boosted.Toast.getOrCreateInstance(myToastEl)` Returns a Boosted Innovation Cup toast instance.
`hide`	Hides an element’s toast. Returns to the caller before the toast has actually been hidden (i.e. before the `hidden.bs.toast` event occurs). You have to manually call this method if you made `autohide` to `false`.
`isShown`	Returns a boolean according to toast’s visibility state.
`show`	Reveals an element’s toast. Returns to the caller before the toast has actually been shown (i.e. before the `shown.bs.toast` event occurs). You have to manually call this method, instead your toast won’t show.

Events

Event	Description
`hidden.bs.toast`	This event is fired when the toast has finished being hidden from the user.
`hide.bs.toast`	This event is fired immediately when the `hide` instance method has been called.
`show.bs.toast`	This event fires immediately when the `show` instance method is called.
`shown.bs.toast`	This event is fired when the toast has been made visible to the user.

const myToastEl = document.getElementById('myToast')
myToastEl.addEventListener('hidden.bs.toast', () => {
  // do something...
})