React Loading Skeleton

Make beautiful, animated loading skeletons that automatically adapt to your app.

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Learn about the changes in version 3, or view the v2 documentation.

Basic Usage

Install via one of:

yarn add react-loading-skeleton
npm install react-loading-skeleton

import Skeleton from 'react-loading-skeleton'
import 'react-loading-skeleton/dist/skeleton.css'

<Skeleton /> // Simple, single-line loading skeleton
<Skeleton count={5} /> // Five-line loading skeleton

Principles

Adapts to the styles you have defined

The Skeleton component should be used directly in your components in place of content that is loading. While other libraries require you to meticulously craft a skeleton screen that matches the font size, line height, and margins of your content, the Skeleton component is automatically sized to the correct dimensions.

For example:

function BlogPost(props) {
  return (
    <div>
      <h1>{props.title || <Skeleton />}</h1>
      {props.body || <Skeleton count={10} />}
    </div>
  );
}

...will produce correctly-sized skeletons for the heading and body without any further configuration.

This ensures the loading state remains up-to-date with any changes to your layout or typography.

Don't make dedicated skeleton screens

Instead, make components with built-in skeleton states.

This approach is beneficial because:

It keeps styles in sync.
Components should represent all possible states — loading included.
It allows for more flexible loading patterns. In the blog post example above, it's possible to have the title load before the body, while having both pieces of content show loading skeletons at the right time.

Theming

Customize individual skeletons with props, or render a SkeletonTheme to style all skeletons below it in the React hierarchy:

import Skeleton, { SkeletonTheme } from 'react-loading-skeleton';

return (
  <SkeletonTheme baseColor="#202020" highlightColor="#444">
    <p>
      <Skeleton count={3} />
    </p>
  </SkeletonTheme>
);

Props Reference

`Skeleton` only

Prop	Description	Default
`count?: number`	The number of lines of skeletons to render. If `count` is a decimal number like 3.5, three full skeletons and one half-width skeleton will be rendered.	`1`
`wrapper?: React.FunctionComponent <PropsWithChildren<unknown>>`	A custom wrapper component that goes around the individual skeleton elements.
`circle?: boolean`	Makes the skeleton circular by setting `border-radius` to `50%`.	`false`
`className?: string`	A custom class name for the individual skeleton elements which is used alongside the default class, `react-loading-skeleton`.
`containerClassName?: string`	A custom class name for the `<span>` that wraps the individual skeleton elements.
`containerTestId?: string`	A string that is added to the container element as a `data-testid` attribute. Use it with `screen.getByTestId('...')` from React Testing Library.
`style?: React.CSSProperties`	This is an escape hatch for advanced use cases and is not the preferred way to style the skeleton. Props (e.g. `width`, `borderRadius`) take priority over this style object.

`Skeleton` and `SkeletonTheme`

Prop	Description	Default
`baseColor?: string`	The background color of the skeleton.	`#ebebeb`
`highlightColor?: string`	The highlight color in the skeleton animation.	`#f5f5f5`
`width?: string \| number`	The width of the skeleton.	`100%`
`height?: string \| number`	The height of each skeleton line.	The font size
`borderRadius?: string \| number`	The border radius of the skeleton.	`0.25rem`
`inline?: boolean`	By default, a `<br />` is inserted after each skeleton so that each skeleton gets its own line. When `inline` is true, no line breaks are inserted.	`false`
`duration?: number`	The length of the animation in seconds.	`1.5`
`direction?: 'ltr' \| 'rtl'`	The direction of the animation, either left-to-right or right-to-left.	`'ltr'`
`enableAnimation?: boolean`	Whether the animation should play. The skeleton will be a solid color when this is `false`. You could use this prop to stop the animation if an error occurs.	`true`

Examples

Custom Wrapper

There are two ways to wrap a skeleton in a container:

function Box({ children }: PropsWithChildren<unknown>) {
  return (
    <div
      style={{
        border: '1px solid #ccc',
        display: 'block',
        lineHeight: 2,
        padding: '1rem',
        marginBottom: '0.5rem',
        width: 100,
      }}
    >
      {children}
    </div>
  );
}

// Method 1: Use the wrapper prop
const wrapped1 = <Skeleton wrapper={Box} count={5} />;

// Method 2: Do it "the normal way"
const wrapped2 = (
  <Box>
    <Skeleton />
  </Box>
);

Troubleshooting

The skeleton width is 0 when the parent has `display: flex`!

In the example below, the width of the skeleton will be 0:

<div style={{ display: 'flex' }}>
  <Skeleton />
</div>

This happens because the skeleton has no intrinsic width. You can fix it by applying flex: 1 to the skeleton container via the containerClassName prop.

For example, if you are using Tailwind, your code would look like this:

<div style={{ display: 'flex' }}>
  <Skeleton containerClassName="flex-1" />
</div>

The height of my container is off by a few pixels!

In the example below, the height of the <div> will be slightly larger than 30 even though the react-loading-skeleton element is exactly 30px.

<div>
  <Skeleton height={30} />
</div>

This is a consequence of how line-height works in CSS. If you need the <div> to be exactly 30px tall, set its line-height to 1. See here for more details.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md to get started.

Acknowledgements

Our logo is based off an image from Font Awesome. Thanks!

srmagura/react-loading-skeleton