React

This package provides React bindings for @floating-ui/dom, a library that provides anchor positioning, and also interaction primitives to build floating UI components.

This allows you to create components such as tooltips, popovers, dropdown menus, hover cards, modal dialogs, select menus, comboboxes, and more.

Library goals

The goal of this library is to provide building blocks to create your own floating UI components, handling difficult parts like accessibility and positioning for you, but not offering pre-built components. In theory, this allows you to build any type of component you desire, since you can add your own custom logic on top.

If you’re looking for flexibility and are comfortable building your own components, this library is hopefully what you’re looking for. If instead, you’re looking for something simpler and ready-made, you will likely find other libraries better suited for your use case. React component libraries that use Floating UI behind the scenes for positioning include Radix UI, Mantine, Ariakit, among others.

Install

The following package provides all modules:

npm install @floating-ui/react

npm install @floating-ui/react

If you only want positioning, without any interactions necessary, the following package is smaller in size. The above is a superset and uses this one as a dependency.

npm install @floating-ui/react-dom

npm install @floating-ui/react-dom

This documentation refers to the latest version of the library. If you find a feature is missing locally, make sure you have upgraded to the latest version:

Usage

There are two main parts to creating floating elements:

Positioning — available for both packages
Interactions — available for @floating-ui/react

Both of these sections should be read in order before reading the API docs for the hooks and components in the left navigation bar (useHover, useFocus, etc.)

Positioning

useFloating()useFloating() is the main hook of each package.

import {useFloating} from '@floating-ui/react';
 
function App() {
  const {x, y, strategy, refs} = useFloating();
 
  return (
    <>
      <button ref={refs.setReference}>Button</button>
      <div
        ref={refs.setFloating}
        style={{
          position: strategy,
          top: y ?? 0,
          left: x ?? 0,
          width: 'max-content',
        }}
      >
        Tooltip
      </div>
    </>
  );
}

import {useFloating} from '@floating-ui/react';
 
function App() {
  const {x, y, strategy, refs} = useFloating();
 
  return (
    <>
      <button ref={refs.setReference}>Button</button>
      <div
        ref={refs.setFloating}
        style={{
          position: strategy,
          top: y ?? 0,
          left: x ?? 0,
          width: 'max-content',
        }}
      >
        Tooltip
      </div>
    </>
  );
}

This will position the floating Tooltip element at the bottom center of the Button element by default.

xx and yy are the positioning coordinates. These values are nullnull initially, before the layout effect has fired (such as during SSR).
strategystrategy is the positioning strategy, 'absolute''absolute' (default) or 'fixed''fixed'.
refs.setReferencerefs.setReference and refs.setFloatingrefs.setFloating are function refs that get called with the elements and update the position when they change (such as with conditional rendering), unlike with plain refs.

Return value

The hook returns all the values from computePosition, plus some extras to work with React. This includes data about the final placement and middleware data which are useful when rendering.

Options

The hook accepts all the options from computePosition, which allows you to customize the position. Here’s an example:

import {
  useFloating,
  offset,
  flip,
  shift,
} from '@floating-ui/react';
 
// Inside your component
useFloating({
  placement: 'right',
  middleware: [offset(10), flip(), shift()],
});

import {
  useFloating,
  offset,
  flip,
  shift,
} from '@floating-ui/react';
 
// Inside your component
useFloating({
  placement: 'right',
  middleware: [offset(10), flip(), shift()],
});

Middleware can alter the positioning from the basic placementplacement, act as visibility optimizers, or provide data to use.

The docs for the middleware that were passed are available here:

All of these are re-exported from the base @floating-ui/dom library.

Updating

The position is only calculated once on render, or when the referencereference or floatingfloating elements change.

To ensure the floating element remains anchored to its reference element in a variety of scenarios without detaching — such as when scrolling or resizing the page — you can pass the autoUpdate utility to the whileElementsMountedwhileElementsMounted prop:

import {useFloating, autoUpdate} from '@floating-ui/react';
 
// Inside your component
useFloating({
  whileElementsMounted: autoUpdate,
});

import {useFloating, autoUpdate} from '@floating-ui/react';
 
// Inside your component
useFloating({
  whileElementsMounted: autoUpdate,
});

To pass options to autoUpdate:

useFloating({
  whileElementsMounted(...args) {
    const cleanup = autoUpdate(...args, {animationFrame: true});
    // Important! Always return the cleanup function.
    return cleanup;
  },
});

useFloating({
  whileElementsMounted(...args) {
    const cleanup = autoUpdate(...args, {animationFrame: true});
    // Important! Always return the cleanup function.
    return cleanup;
  },
});

autoUpdate performance

autoUpdate is expensive because it re-renders the host component the useFloating()useFloating() hook lives in on every single scroll or resize event. Therefore you should be mindful of the following:

Try not to call useFloating()useFloating() in a big complex parent component, especially if it renders a list. Instead, create a new child component that only renders out the reference and floating elements. This will keep the high frequency re-renders scoped to the cheap child component.
Ensure you are using conditional rendering for the floating element, not an opacity/visibility/display style. If you are using CSS to hide it, instead of conditional rendering, use an effect to register and clean up autoUpdate instead of the whileElementsMountedwhileElementsMounted prop.

Manual updating

While autoUpdate covers most cases where the position of the floating element must be updated, it does not cover every single one possible due to performance/platform limitations.

The hook returns an update()update() function to update the position at will:

const {update} = useFloating();
 
<Panel onResize={update} />;

const {update} = useFloating();
 
<Panel onResize={update} />;

Refs

To access the DOM elements, you can either access the refs:

const {refs} = useFloating();
 
// Inside an effect or event handler:
refs.reference.current;
refs.floating.current;

const {refs} = useFloating();
 
// Inside an effect or event handler:
refs.reference.current;
refs.floating.current;

Or the elements directly:

const {elements} = useFloating();
 
// During render, unlike the refs:
elements.reference;
elements.floating;

const {elements} = useFloating();
 
// During render, unlike the refs:
elements.reference;
elements.floating;

External elements can be synchronized like so, if they live outside the component:

function MyComponent({referenceEl, floatingEl}) {
  const {refs} = useFloating();
 
  useLayoutEffect(() => {
    refs.setReference(referenceEl);
    refs.setFloating(floatingEl);
  }, [refs, referenceEl, floatingEl]);
}

function MyComponent({referenceEl, floatingEl}) {
  const {refs} = useFloating();
 
  useLayoutEffect(() => {
    refs.setReference(referenceEl);
    refs.setFloating(floatingEl);
  }, [refs, referenceEl, floatingEl]);
}

Effects

Positioning is done in an async function, which means the position is ready during a microtask, after layout effects are executed. This means initially, the floating element is situated at the top-left (0, 0) of its offset container — so calling DOM methods that cause side-effects like scrolling will result in unexpected behavior.

The hook returns an isPositionedisPositioned boolean that lets you know if the floating element has been positioned:

const [isOpen, setIsOpen] = useState(false);
const {isPositioned} = useFloating({
  // Synchronize `isPositioned` with an `open` state.
  open: isOpen,
});
 
// Each time the floating element opens, we want to focus and
// scroll some element into view.
useLayoutEffect(() => {
  if (isPositioned) {
    someElement.focus();
    someElement.scrollIntoView();
  }
}, [isPositioned]);

const [isOpen, setIsOpen] = useState(false);
const {isPositioned} = useFloating({
  // Synchronize `isPositioned` with an `open` state.
  open: isOpen,
});
 
// Each time the floating element opens, we want to focus and
// scroll some element into view.
useLayoutEffect(() => {
  if (isPositioned) {
    someElement.focus();
    someElement.scrollIntoView();
  }
}, [isPositioned]);

The openopen option accepts a boolean that represents the open/close state of the floating element. This ensures you can wait each time it opens when the host component does not unmount, which is necessary in cases where the reference element relocates on the page.

Arrow

The arrow module exported from this package allows refs in addition to elements:

import {arrow} from '@floating-ui/react';
 
// Inside your component
const arrowRef = useRef(null);
useFloating({
  middleware: [
    arrow({
      element: arrowRef,
    }),
  ],
});

import {arrow} from '@floating-ui/react';
 
// Inside your component
const arrowRef = useRef(null);
useFloating({
  middleware: [
    arrow({
      element: arrowRef,
    }),
  ],
});

If you need your arrow to be reactive to updates (e.g. showing or hiding the arrow with conditional rendering while the floating element is open), you should use state instead. Alternatively, you can use visibility: hiddenvisibility: hidden CSS to hide it and keep using a plain ref.

For details on creating an arrow element, see the arrow middleware page.

Testing

When testing your components, ensure you flush microtasks immediately after the floating element renders. This will avoid the act warning.

import {act} from '@testing-library/react';
 
test('something', async () => {
  render(<Tooltip open />);
  await act(async () => {}); // Flush microtasks.
  // Position state is ready by this line.
});

import {act} from '@testing-library/react';
 
test('something', async () => {
  render(<Tooltip open />);
  await act(async () => {}); // Flush microtasks.
  // Position state is ready by this line.
});

You may use this a lot, so you can create a custom function:

const waitForPosition = () => act(async () => {});
 
test('something', async () => {
  render(<Tooltip open />);
  await waitForPosition();
  expect(screen.queryByRole('tooltip')).toBeInTheDocument();
});

const waitForPosition = () => act(async () => {});
 
test('something', async () => {
  render(<Tooltip open />);
  await waitForPosition();
  expect(screen.queryByRole('tooltip')).toBeInTheDocument();
});

Narrow reference type

Because the referencereference callback ref accepts a virtual element, you may need to narrow the type when performing DOM operations on the ref:

const {refs} = useFloating<HTMLButtonElement>();
 
// @floating-ui/react
// refs.domReference.current is now of type HTMLButtonElement
 
// @floating-ui/react-dom
// refs.reference.current is now of type HTMLButtonElement

const {refs} = useFloating<HTMLButtonElement>();
 
// @floating-ui/react
// refs.domReference.current is now of type HTMLButtonElement
 
// @floating-ui/react-dom
// refs.reference.current is now of type HTMLButtonElement

In the full package, it is narrowed on refs.domReferencerefs.domReference, as the position can be separated.

Variable freshness

When using React state and middleware, variables inside function options aren’t fresh. This means that if you use a variable inside a function option, it will always be the same value, even if the variable changes.

const [value, setValue] = useState(0);
// Fresh:
offset(value);
// Not fresh:
offset(() => value);

const [value, setValue] = useState(0);
// Fresh:
offset(value);
// Not fresh:
offset(() => value);

You should instead use a ref:

// Fresh:
offset(() => valueRef.current);

// Fresh:
offset(() => valueRef.current);

To update the position when the ref changes, you can call update()update() manually.

This is where the compatibility with the leaner @floating-ui/react-dom package ends. The following docs now only apply to @floating-ui/react.

View examples, or read below to understand the basics.

Interactions

To add interactions, such as the ability to only show a floating element while hovering over its reference element, the hook must first accept the following two options:

openopen — a boolean that represents whether the floating element is currently rendered.
onOpenChangeonOpenChange — a state setter called when the open state changes.

import {useFloating} from '@floating-ui/react';
 
function App() {
  const [isOpen, setIsOpen] = useState(false);
 
  const {x, y, strategy, refs} = useFloating({
    open: isOpen,
    onOpenChange: setIsOpen,
  });
 
  return (
    <>
      <button ref={refs.setReference}>Button</button>
      {isOpen && (
        <div
          ref={refs.setFloating}
          style={{
            position: strategy,
            top: y ?? 0,
            left: x ?? 0,
            width: 'max-content',
          }}
        >
          Tooltip
        </div>
      )}
    </>
  );
}

import {useFloating} from '@floating-ui/react';
 
function App() {
  const [isOpen, setIsOpen] = useState(false);
 
  const {x, y, strategy, refs} = useFloating({
    open: isOpen,
    onOpenChange: setIsOpen,
  });
 
  return (
    <>
      <button ref={refs.setReference}>Button</button>
      {isOpen && (
        <div
          ref={refs.setFloating}
          style={{
            position: strategy,
            top: y ?? 0,
            left: x ?? 0,
            width: 'max-content',
          }}
        >
          Tooltip
        </div>
      )}
    </>
  );
}

Note that floating components do not always require “anchor positioning” — for instance a modal dialog centered in the viewport. So the xx, yy and strategystrategy values returned from the hook can be safely ignored.

Interaction hooks

useInteractions()useInteractions() is a separate hook that accepts an array of interaction hooks and returns prop getters.

Each interaction hook accepts the contextcontext object which gets returned from useFloating()useFloating() as its first argument:

import {
  useFloating,
  useInteractions,
  useHover,
  useFocus,
} from '@floating-ui/react';
 
// Inside your component
const {refs, context} = useFloating();
 
const hover = useHover(context);
const focus = useFocus(context);
 
const {getReferenceProps, getFloatingProps} = useInteractions([
  hover,
  focus,
]);

import {
  useFloating,
  useInteractions,
  useHover,
  useFocus,
} from '@floating-ui/react';
 
// Inside your component
const {refs, context} = useFloating();
 
const hover = useHover(context);
const focus = useFocus(context);
 
const {getReferenceProps, getFloatingProps} = useInteractions([
  hover,
  focus,
]);

This API enables each of the hooks to be fully tree-shakeable and opt-in. The navigation bar on the left explains them in detail.

Prop getters

The prop getters are used to add event listeners, among other functionality, to the reference and floating elements. When called, they return an object of props like onFocusonFocus.

<>
  <button ref={refs.setReference} {...getReferenceProps()}>
    My button
  </button>
  <div
    ref={refs.setFloating}
    style={{
      position: strategy,
      left: x ?? 0,
      top: y ?? 0,
      width: 'max-content',
    }}
    {...getFloatingProps()}
  >
    My tooltip
  </div>
</>

<>
  <button ref={refs.setReference} {...getReferenceProps()}>
    My button
  </button>
  <div
    ref={refs.setFloating}
    style={{
      position: strategy,
      left: x ?? 0,
      top: y ?? 0,
      width: 'max-content',
    }}
    {...getFloatingProps()}
  >
    My tooltip
  </div>
</>

All custom event listener props, such as onClickonClick, onKeyDownonKeyDown and more you pass to the element should be specified inside the prop getter. They perform merging of their own internal event listeners and your own without overriding them.

// ❌ Your `onClick` can be overridden:
<div
  onClick={() => {
    // Potentially overwritten by the props below.
  }}
  {...getReferenceProps()}
/>

// ❌ Your `onClick` can be overridden:
<div
  onClick={() => {
    // Potentially overwritten by the props below.
  }}
  {...getReferenceProps()}
/>

// ✅ Merging works inside `getReferenceProps()`:
<div
  {...getReferenceProps({
    onClick() {
      // Will not be overwritten.
    },
  })}
/>

// ✅ Merging works inside `getReferenceProps()`:
<div
  {...getReferenceProps({
    onClick() {
      // Will not be overwritten.
    },
  })}
/>

You may find passing all props through the prop getter helps you remember to prevent overriding event handlers, but is not currently required unless the value is a function event handler that starts with on.

`getItemProps`

const {getItemProps} = useInteractions([]);

const {getItemProps} = useInteractions([]);

This is an optional prop getter that is only used when dealing with a list inside your floating element (see useListNavigation).

Data

The context object contains a data ref with some information available.

const {context} = useFloating();
 
useEffect(() => {
  console.log(context.dataRef.current);
}, [context]);

const {context} = useFloating();
 
useEffect(() => {
  console.log(context.dataRef.current);
}, [context]);

Currently, only two built-in values are set:

interface ContextData {
  // Which event caused the floating element to open.
  openEvent?: MouseEvent | PointerEvent | FocusEvent;
 
  // Whether the user is typing currently when `useTypeahead`
  // is in use.
  typing?: boolean;
 
  // Add support for custom data to pass around.
  [key: string]: any;
}

interface ContextData {
  // Which event caused the floating element to open.
  openEvent?: MouseEvent | PointerEvent | FocusEvent;
 
  // Whether the user is typing currently when `useTypeahead`
  // is in use.
  typing?: boolean;
 
  // Add support for custom data to pass around.
  [key: string]: any;
}

Changing the positioning reference while retaining events

By default, the refs.setReferencerefs.setReference element is both the events and position reference. The refs.setPositionReferencerefs.setPositionReference callback ref allows you to separate the position to another element (either real or virtual):

const {refs} = useFloating();
 
return (
  <>
    <button ref={refs.setReference} {...getReferenceProps()}>
      Event reference
    </button>
    <button ref={refs.setPositionReference}>
      Position reference
    </button>
  </>
);

const {refs} = useFloating();
 
return (
  <>
    <button ref={refs.setReference} {...getReferenceProps()}>
      Event reference
    </button>
    <button ref={refs.setPositionReference}>
      Position reference
    </button>
  </>
);

View on CodeSandbox

Multiple floating elements on a single reference element

import {useMergeRefs} from '@floating-ui/react';

import {useMergeRefs} from '@floating-ui/react';

Refs can be merged with the useMergeRefs hook, and props can be merged by calling one of the getters inside of the other:

const {refs: tooltipRefs} = useFloating();
const {refs: menuRefs} = useFloating();
 
const {getReferenceProps: getTooltipReferenceProps} =
  useInteractions([]);
const {getReferenceProps: getMenuReferenceProps} =
  useInteractions([]);
 
const ref = useMergeRefs([
  tooltipRefs.setReference,
  menuRefs.setReference,
]);
const props = getTooltipReferenceProps(getMenuReferenceProps());
 
return (
  <button ref={ref} {...props}>
    Common reference
  </button>
);

const {refs: tooltipRefs} = useFloating();
const {refs: menuRefs} = useFloating();
 
const {getReferenceProps: getTooltipReferenceProps} =
  useInteractions([]);
const {getReferenceProps: getMenuReferenceProps} =
  useInteractions([]);
 
const ref = useMergeRefs([
  tooltipRefs.setReference,
  menuRefs.setReference,
]);
const props = getTooltipReferenceProps(getMenuReferenceProps());
 
return (
  <button ref={ref} {...props}>
    Common reference
  </button>
);

View on CodeSandbox

Disabled elements

Disabled elements don’t fire events, so tooltips attached to disabled buttons don’t show. Avoid using the disableddisabled prop, and make the button visually disabled instead. This ensures you won’t need any wrapper tags and makes the tooltip accessible to all users.

View on CodeSandbox