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What forces layout/reflow. The comprehensive list.
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what-forces-layout.md

What forces layout / reflow

All of the below properties or methods, when requested/called in JavaScript, will trigger the browser to synchronously calculate the style and layout*. This is also called reflow or layout thrashing, and is common performance bottleneck.

Generally, all APIs that synchronously provide layout metrics will trigger forced reflow / layout. Read on for additional cases and details.

Element APIs

Getting box metrics
  • elem.offsetLeft, elem.offsetTop, elem.offsetWidth, elem.offsetHeight, elem.offsetParent
  • elem.clientLeft, elem.clientTop, elem.clientWidth, elem.clientHeight
  • elem.getClientRects(), elem.getBoundingClientRect()
Scroll stuff
  • elem.scrollBy(), elem.scrollTo()
  • elem.scrollIntoView(), elem.scrollIntoViewIfNeeded()
  • elem.scrollWidth, elem.scrollHeight
  • elem.scrollLeft, elem.scrollTop also, setting them
Setting focus
Also…
  • elem.computedRole, elem.computedName
  • elem.innerText (source)

Getting window dimensions

  • window.scrollX, window.scrollY
  • window.innerHeight, window.innerWidth
  • window.visualViewport.height / width / offsetTop / offsetLeft (source)

document

  • document.scrollingElement only forces style
  • document.elementFromPoint

Forms: Setting selection + focus

  • inputElem.focus()
  • inputElem.select(), textareaElem.select()

Mouse events: Reading offset data

  • mouseEvt.layerX, mouseEvt.layerY, mouseEvt.offsetX, mouseEvt.offsetY (source)

Calling getComputedStyle()

window.getComputedStyle() will typically force style recalc.

window.getComputedStyle() will often force layout, as well.

Details of the conditions where gCS() forces layout

window.getComputedStyle() will force layout in one of 3 conditions:

  1. The element is in a shadow tree
  2. There are media queries (viewport-related ones). Specifically, one of the following: (source
    • min-width, min-height, max-width, max-height, width, height
    • aspect-ratio, min-aspect-ratio, max-aspect-ratio
    • device-pixel-ratio, resolution, orientation , min-device-pixel-ratio, max-device-pixel-ratio
  3. The property requested is one of the following: (source)
    • height, width
    • top, right, bottom, left
    • margin [-top, -right, -bottom, -left, or shorthand] only if the margin is fixed.
    • padding [-top, -right, -bottom, -left, or shorthand] only if the padding is fixed.
    • transform, transform-origin, perspective-origin
    • translate, rotate, scale
    • grid, grid-template, grid-template-columns, grid-template-rows
    • perspective-origin
    • These items were previously in the list but appear to not be any longer (as of Feb 2018): motion-path, motion-offset, motion-rotation, x, y, rx, ry

Getting Range dimensions

  • range.getClientRects(), range.getBoundingClientRect()

SVG

Quite a lot of properties/methods force, but I haven't made an exhaustive list. This list in incomplete:

  • SVGLocatable: computeCTM(), getBBox()
  • SVGTextContent: getCharNumAtPosition(), getComputedTextLength(), getEndPositionOfChar(), getExtentOfChar(), getNumberOfChars(), getRotationOfChar(), getStartPositionOfChar(), getSubStringLength(), selectSubString()
  • SVGUse: instanceRoot

Use the "chromium source tree link" below to explore on your own!

contenteditable

  • Lots & lots of stuff, …including copying an image to clipboard (source)

* Appendix

  • Reflow only has a cost if the document has changed and invalidated the style or layout. Typically, this is because the DOM was changed (classes modified, nodes added/removed, even adding a psuedo-class like :focus).
  • If layout is forced, style must be recalculated first. So forced layout triggers both operations. Their costs are very dependent on the content/situation, but typically both operations are similar in cost.
  • What should you do about all this? Well, the More on forced layout section below covers everything in more detail, but the short version is:
    1. for loops that force layout & change the DOM are the worst, avoid them.
    2. Use DevTools Performance Panel to see where this happens. You may be surprised to see how often your app code and library code hits this.
    3. Batch your writes & reads to the DOM (via FastDOM or a virtual DOM implementation). Read your metrics at the begininng of the frame (very very start of rAF, scroll handler, etc), when the numbers are still identical to the last time layout was done.

Timeline trace of The Guardian. Outbrain is forcing layout repeatedly, probably in a loop.
Cross-browser

More on forced layout

Updated slightly April 2020. Codesearch links and a few changes to relevant element properties.

@Kaiido
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Kaiido commented Nov 25, 2024

@oliviertassinari like getComputedStyle the call itself is free, it's calling get() on it that will cause a reflow. And yes, while the values aren't the "resolved" ones they still force a layout, at least in current Chrome's implementation: https://jsfiddle.net/sempzykg/ I guess they need it even to be able to perform the cascading.

@oliviertassinari
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@Kaiido Amazing, thanks for writing that test case!

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