break-inside

Baseline Widely available *

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since January 2019.

* Some parts of this feature may have varying levels of support.

The break-inside CSS property sets how page, column, or region breaks should behave inside a generated box. If there is no generated box, the property is ignored.

Try it

break-inside: auto;

break-inside: avoid;


  

    

      The effect of this property can be noticed when the document is being
      printed or a preview of a print is displayed.
    

    
    

      
Content before the property

      
Content with 'break-inside'

      
Content after the property

    

  




.box {
  border: solid #5b6dcd 5px;
  background-color: #5b6dcd;
  margin: 10px 0;
  padding: 5px;
}

#example-element {
  border: solid 5px #ffc129;
  background-color: #ffc129;
  color: black;
}

.hide-element {
  display: none;
}

@media print {
  #example-element {
    height: 25cm;
  }
}

const btn = document.getElementById("print-btn");
const editorContainer = document.getElementsByClassName(
  "css-editor-container",
)[0];
const exampleHTMLElement = document.getElementById("default-example");

const printableSection = document.createElement("div");
printableSection.setAttribute("id", "printable-section");
printableSection.classList.add("hide-element");
document.body.appendChild(printableSection);

btn.addEventListener("click", () => {
  const exampleContent = exampleHTMLElement.innerHTML;

  editorContainer.classList.add("hide-element");
  printableSection.innerHTML = exampleContent;
  printableSection.classList.remove("hide-element");

  window.print();

  printableSection.classList.add("hide-element");
  printableSection.innerHTML = "";
  editorContainer.classList.remove("hide-element");
});

Syntax

css
/* Keyword values */
break-inside: auto;
break-inside: avoid;
break-inside: avoid-page;
break-inside: avoid-column;
break-inside: avoid-region;

/* Global values */
break-inside: inherit;
break-inside: initial;
break-inside: revert;
break-inside: revert-layer;
break-inside: unset;

Each possible break point (in other words, each element boundary) is affected by three properties: the break-after value of the previous element, the break-before value of the next element, and the break-inside value of the containing element.

To determine if a break must be done, the following rules are applied:

  1. If any of the three concerned values is a forced break value (always, left, right, page, column, or region), it has precedence. If more than one of them are such a break, the value of the element that appears the latest in the flow is used. Thus, the break-before value has precedence over the break-after value, which in turn has precedence over the break-inside value.
  2. If any of the three concerned values is an avoid break value (avoid, avoid-page, avoid-region, or avoid-column), no such break will be applied at that point.

Once forced breaks have been applied, soft breaks may be added if needed, but not on element boundaries that resolve in a corresponding avoid value.

Values

auto

Allows, but does not force, any break (page, column, or region) to be inserted within the principal box.

avoid

Avoids any break (page, column, or region) from being inserted within the principal box.

avoid-page

Avoids any page break within the principal box.

avoid-column

Avoids any column break within the principal box.

avoid-region

Avoids any region break within the principal box.

Page break aliases

For compatibility reasons, the legacy page-break-inside property should be treated by browsers as an alias of break-inside. This ensures that sites using page-break-inside continue to work as designed. A subset of values should be aliased as follows:

page-break-inside break-inside
auto auto
avoid avoid

Formal definition

Initial valueauto
Applies toblock-level elements
Inheritedno
Computed valueas specified
Animation typediscrete

Formal syntax

break-inside = 
  auto          |
  avoid         |
  avoid-page    |
  avoid-column  |
  avoid-region

Examples

Avoiding breaking inside a figure

In the following example we have a container that contains an

spanning all columns (achieved using column-span: all) and a series of paragraphs laid out in multiple columns using column-width: 200px. We also have a
containing an image and a caption.

By default, it is possible for you to get a break between the image and its caption, which is not what we want. To avoid this, we have set break-inside: avoid on the

, which causes them to always stay together.

HTML

html

  
Main heading


  

    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nulla vitae
    fringilla mauris. Quisque commodo eget nisi sed pretium. Mauris luctus nec
    lacus in ultricies. Mauris vitae hendrerit arcu, ac scelerisque lacus.
    Aliquam lobortis in lacus sit amet posuere. Fusce iaculis urna id neque
    dapibus, eu lacinia lectus dictum.
  


  

    
    
The Firefox logo — fox wrapped around the world

  


  

    Praesent condimentum dui dui, sit amet rutrum diam tincidunt eu. Cras
    suscipit porta leo sit amet rutrum. Sed vehicula ornare tincidunt. Curabitur
    a ipsum ac diam mattis volutpat ac ut elit. Nullam luctus justo non
    vestibulum gravida. Morbi metus libero, pharetra non porttitor a, molestie
    nec nisi.
  


  

    In finibus viverra enim vel suscipit. Quisque consequat velit eu orci
    malesuada, ut interdum tortor molestie. Proin sed pellentesque augue. Nam
    risus justo, faucibus non porta a, congue vel massa. Cras luctus lacus nisl,
    sed tincidunt velit pharetra ac. Duis suscipit faucibus dui sed ultricies.

CSS

css
html {
  font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;
}

body {
  width: 80%;
  margin: 0 auto;
}

h1 {
  font-size: 3rem;
  letter-spacing: 2px;
  column-span: all;
}

h1 + p {
  margin-top: 0;
}

p {
  line-height: 1.5;
  break-after: column;
}

figure {
  break-inside: avoid;
}

img {
  max-width: 70%;
  display: block;
  margin: 0 auto;
}

figcaption {
  font-style: italic;
  font-size: 0.8rem;
  width: 70%;
}

article {
  column-width: 200px;
  gap: 20px;
}

Result

Specifications

Specification
CSS Fragmentation Module Level 3
# break-within
CSS Regions Module Level 1
# region-flow-break
CSS Multi-column Layout Module Level 1
# break-before-break-after-break-inside

Browser compatibility

See also