How to Create a CSS-Tricks Custom Scrollbar

By  on  

Chris Coyier of CSS-Tricks is an amazing engineer and blogger. He's not only creative but has always had the drive to put his thoughts to work, no matter how large. He also has a good eye for the little things that can make CSS-Tricks or your site special. One of those little things is his custom scrollbar -- let's have a look at how it's done!

To create this excellent scrollbar effect, you'll need to employ three CSS selectors and the styling of your choosing:

/* Sets the dimensions of the entire scrollbar */
html::-webkit-scrollbar {
    width: 30px;
    height: 30px;
}

/* The grabbable scrollbar button  */
html::-webkit-scrollbar-thumb {
    background: -webkit-gradient(linear,left top,left bottom,from(#ff8a00),to(#e52e71));
    background: linear-gradient(180deg,#ff8a00,#e52e71);
    border-radius: 30px;
    box-shadow: inset 2px 2px 2px hsla(0,0%,100%,.25), inset -2px -2px 2px rgba(0,0,0,.25);
}

/* The vertical scrollbar background */
html::-webkit-scrollbar-track {
    background: linear-gradient(90deg,#201c29,#201c29 1px,#100e17 0,#100e17);
}

A few important notes: obviously you can create your own gradient colors but, more importantly, this scrollbar works only in Chrome, Safari, and Edge.

You need to be careful with these types of small customizations. When done well, they add to your branding and design. When done poorly, you confuse your user. Happy styling!

Recent Features

  • By
    9 Mind-Blowing WebGL Demos

    As much as developers now loathe Flash, we're still playing a bit of catch up to natively duplicate the animation capabilities that Adobe's old technology provided us.  Of course we have canvas, an awesome technology, one which I highlighted 9 mind-blowing demos.  Another technology available...

  • By
    9 Mind-Blowing Canvas Demos

    The <canvas> element has been a revelation for the visual experts among our ranks.  Canvas provides the means for incredible and efficient animations with the added bonus of no Flash; these developers can flash their awesome JavaScript skills instead.  Here are nine unbelievable canvas demos that...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    CSS pointer-events

    The responsibilities taken on by CSS seems to be increasingly blurring with JavaScript. Consider the -webkit-touch-callout CSS property, which prevents iOS's link dialog menu when you tap and hold a clickable element. The pointer-events property is even more JavaScript-like, preventing: click actions from doing...

  • By
    Morphing Elements Using MooTools and CSS

    Morphing an element between CSS classes is another great trick the MooTools JavaScript library enables you to do. Morphing isn't the most practical use of MooTools, but it's still a trick at your disposal. Step 1: The XHTML The block of content that will change is...

Discussion

  1. That is a very useful customization! As you said, proper execution is very necessary as a poorly executed customization can really harm your website. Thank you for sharing :)

  2. I’ve created this tiny script for easy scrollbar customization.

    https://github.com/yairEO/fakescroll

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!