Navbar

Create flexible, responsive navigation bars. Includes support for branding, navigation, and a built-in drawer for mobile.

The Idea React Navbar wrapper composes the Bootstrap 6 .navbar markup into semantic React components. This guide adapts the Bootstrap Navbar documentation.

Example

Here's a navbar that includes most supported sub-components and a responsive right drawer with the Drawer wrapper. Use the lower-right corner grip to resize your browser and preview the responsive behavior.

How it works

Here's what you need to know before getting started with the navbar:

• Navbars require a wrapping .navbar with a breakpoint-first navbar-expand class (for example, md:navbar-expand) for responsive collapsing and color scheme classes. Set the expand prop to 'md' to render that class.
• Navbars and their contents are fluid by default. Change the container to limit their horizontal width in different ways.
• Use margin, padding, and flex utility classes for controlling spacing and alignment within navbars.
• Navbars are responsive by default using the drawer component. On small viewports, navigation links slide in from the side as a Drawer.
• Ensure accessibility by using a <nav> element—Navbar always renders one—or add role="navigation" to a generic element.
• Indicate the current item with aria-current="page" for the current page or aria-current="true" for the current item in a set.

The drawer animation honors prefers-reduced-motion. Bootstrap's Callout for reduced motion applies to the React Drawer as well.

Supported content

Navbars come with built-in support for a handful of sub-components. Choose from the following as needed:

• NavbarBrand for your company, product, or project name.
• NavbarNav for a full-height and lightweight navigation, including support for menus.
• NavbarToggler for use with the drawer and other navigation toggling behaviors.
• Flex and spacing utilities for any form controls and actions.
• NavbarText for adding vertically centered strings of text.

Brand

The .navbar-brand can be applied to most elements, but an anchor works best, as some elements might require utility classes or custom styles. Use NavbarBrand for the anchor form.

Text

Add your text within an element with the .navbar-brand class.

Image

You can replace the text within the .navbar-brand with an image. The Image wrapper renders Bootstrap's image utilities.

Image and text

You can also make use of some additional utilities to add an image and text at the same time. Note the addition of .d-inline-block and .align-text-top on the image.

Nav

Navbar navigation links build on the .nav options with their own modifier class and require the use of toggler classes for proper responsive styling. Navigation in navbars will also grow to occupy as much horizontal space as possible to keep your navbar contents securely aligned.

Add the .active class on .nav-link to indicate the current page. Please note that you should also add the aria-current attribute on the active .nav-link. The NavItem and NavLink wrappers keep these attributes and the disabled state consistent.

And because we use classes for our navs, you can avoid the list-based approach entirely if you like.

You can also use menus in your navbar. Menus require a wrapping element for positioning, so be sure to use separate and nested elements for .nav-item and .nav-link as shown below. The Menu wrapper manages open state and keyboard navigation for the trigger and panel.

Forms

Place various form controls and components within a navbar:

Immediate child elements of .navbar use flex layout and will default to justify-content: space-between. Use additional flex utilities as needed to adjust this behavior.

Input groups work, too. If your navbar is an entire form, or mostly a form, you can use the <form> element as the container and save some markup.

Various buttons are supported as part of these navbar forms, too. This is also a great reminder that vertical alignment utilities can be used to align different sized elements.

Text

Navbars may contain bits of text with the help of .navbar-text. This class adjusts vertical alignment and horizontal spacing for strings of text.

Mix and match with other components and utilities as needed.

Dark navbar

To make a navbar dark, add data-bs-theme="dark" to the .navbar element. The theme prop renders that attribute for you.

Translucent navbar

Add .navbar-translucent to blur and saturate the background of a navbar. This works well for navbars positioned over content, such as fixed or sticky navbars.

Color schemes

Navbar themes are easier than ever thanks to Bootstrap's combination of Sass and CSS variables. The default is the "light navbar" for use with light background colors, but you can also apply data-bs-theme="dark" to the .navbar parent for dark background colors. Then, customize with .bg-* and additional utilities.

<nav class="navbar" data-bs-theme="dark">
    <!-- Navbar content -->
</nav>

<nav class="navbar bg-primary" data-bs-theme="dark">
    <!-- Navbar content -->
</nav>

<nav class="navbar bg-1" data-bs-theme="light">
    <!-- Navbar content -->
</nav>

Containers

Although it's not required, you can wrap a navbar in a .container to center it on a page—though note that an inner container is still required. Or you can add a container inside the .navbar to only center the contents of a fixed or static top navbar.

Use any of the responsive containers to change how wide the content in your navbar is presented.

Placement

Use Bootstrap's position utilities to place navbars in non-static positions. Choose from fixed to the top, fixed to the bottom, stickied to the top (scrolls with the page until it reaches the top, then stays there), or stickied to the bottom.

Fixed navbars use position: fixed, meaning they're pulled from the normal flow of the DOM and may require custom CSS (for example, padding-top on the <body>) to prevent overlap with other elements.

<Navbar className="fixed-top">…</Navbar>
<Navbar className="fixed-bottom">…</Navbar>
<Navbar className="sticky-top">…</Navbar>
<Navbar className="sticky-bottom">…</Navbar>

Responsive behaviors

Navbars can use NavbarToggler and breakpoint-first navbar-expand classes to determine when their content appears in a drawer or inline. In combination with other utilities, you can easily choose when to show or hide particular elements.

For navbars that never collapse, add the navbar-expand class on the navbar by setting expand without a breakpoint. For navbars that always show the drawer, omit expand.

Drawer

By default, navbars use the drawer component for their responsive behavior. This provides a modern drawer-style menu that slides in from any side of the screen.

Drawer placement

You can customize which side the drawer appears from using drawer placement classes:

• .drawer-start - slides in from the left (or right in RTL)
• .drawer-end - slides in from the right (or left in RTL)
• .drawer-top - slides in from the top
• .drawer-bottom - slides in from the bottom

The placement prop on Drawer and the navbar demos maps to these classes. These examples omit the navbar-expand class to always show the drawer behavior. Click the toggler to see the drawer slide in from different directions.

Toggler

Navbar togglers are left-aligned by default, but should they follow a sibling element like a .navbar-brand, they'll automatically be aligned to the far right. Reversing your markup will reverse the placement of the toggler.

These examples omit the navbar-expand class to always show the collapsed state with the toggler visible. Click the toggler to open the drawer.

With no .navbar-brand shown (hidden inside the drawer):

With a brand name shown on the left and toggler on the right:

With a toggler on the left and brand name on the right:

External content

Sometimes you want to use the drawer to trigger a container element for content that structurally sits outside of the .navbar. Because the React wrapper controls the drawer through state rather than id matching, the drawer and toggler can be composed anywhere in the same component.

When you do this, include additional logic to move focus programmatically to the container when it is opened. Otherwise, keyboard users and users of assistive technologies will likely have a hard time finding the newly revealed content—particularly if the container that was opened comes before the toggler in the document's structure.

CSS

Variables

Navbar colors, spacing, and toggler dimensions are defined by CSS variables on .navbar and .navbar-nav. See the upstream navbar CSS for the complete variable and Sass map reference.

Sass map

Bootstrap reassigns the global $breakpoints map to $navbar-breakpoints in scss/_navbar.scss and uses this for the loop that generates the responsive navbar expand/collapse classes. This allows you to customize the breakpoints for navbars independently of the global breakpoints.

Sass loops

Responsive navbar expand/collapse classes (for example, md:navbar-expand) are combined with the $navbar-breakpoints map and generated through a loop in scss/_navbar.scss.

React behavior

Bootstrap toggles the navbar drawer through the data-bs-toggle="drawer" plugin. The React components manage open state themselves and expose the same markup as props:

NavbarDemo and NavbarExternalDemo are documentation-only components that keep the drawer state for these examples. In your own application, keep the open state in your component or model and pass it to Drawer and NavbarToggler.