Preview Card

A popup that appears when a link is hovered, showing a preview for sighted users.

Usage guidelines

• Popup content should reflect the link destination: Avoid placing unique or essential information in the popup unless it is also available on the linked page, so all users can access the same information. Preview cards are a visual enhancement for sighted mouse and keyboard users and are not accessible to touch or screen reader users.

Anatomy

Import the component and assemble its parts:

import { PreviewCard } from '@base-ui/react/preview-card';

<PreviewCard.Root>
  <PreviewCard.Trigger />
  <PreviewCard.Portal>
    <PreviewCard.Backdrop />
    <PreviewCard.Positioner>
      <PreviewCard.Popup>
        <PreviewCard.Arrow />
      </PreviewCard.Popup>
    </PreviewCard.Positioner>
  </PreviewCard.Portal>
</PreviewCard.Root>;

Examples

Detached triggers

A preview card can be controlled by a trigger located either inside or outside the <PreviewCard.Root> component. For simple, one-off interactions, place the <PreviewCard.Trigger> inside <PreviewCard.Root>, as shown in the example at the top of this page.

However, if defining the preview card's content next to its trigger is not practical, you can use a detached trigger. This involves placing the <PreviewCard.Trigger> outside of <PreviewCard.Root> and linking them with a handle created by the PreviewCard.createHandle() function.

const demoPreviewCard = PreviewCard.createHandle();

<PreviewCard.Trigger handle={demoPreviewCard} href="#">
  Link
</PreviewCard.Trigger>

<PreviewCard.Root handle={demoPreviewCard}>
  ...
</PreviewCard.Root>

Multiple triggers

A single preview card can be opened by multiple trigger elements. You can achieve this by using the same handle for several detached triggers, or by placing multiple <PreviewCard.Trigger> components inside a single <PreviewCard.Root>.

<PreviewCard.Root>
  <PreviewCard.Trigger href="#">Trigger 1</PreviewCard.Trigger>
  <PreviewCard.Trigger href="#">Trigger 2</PreviewCard.Trigger>
  ...
</PreviewCard.Root>

const demoPreviewCard = PreviewCard.createHandle();

<PreviewCard.Trigger handle={demoPreviewCard} href="#">
  Trigger 1
</PreviewCard.Trigger>

<PreviewCard.Trigger handle={demoPreviewCard} href="#">
  Trigger 2
</PreviewCard.Trigger>

<PreviewCard.Root handle={demoPreviewCard}>
  ...
</PreviewCard.Root>

The preview card can render different content depending on which trigger opened it. This is achieved by passing a payload to the <PreviewCard.Trigger> and using the function-as-a-child pattern in <PreviewCard.Root>.

The payload can be strongly typed by providing a type argument to the createHandle() function:

const demoPreviewCard = PreviewCard.createHandle<{ title: string }>();

<PreviewCard.Trigger handle={demoPreviewCard} payload={{ title: 'Trigger 1' }} href="#">
  Trigger 1
</PreviewCard.Trigger>

<PreviewCard.Trigger handle={demoPreviewCard} payload={{ title: 'Trigger 2' }} href="#">
  Trigger 2
</PreviewCard.Trigger>

<PreviewCard.Root handle={demoPreviewCard}>
  {({ payload }) => (
    <PreviewCard.Portal>
      <PreviewCard.Positioner sideOffset={8}>
        <PreviewCard.Popup>
          {payload !== undefined && (
            <span>
              Preview card opened by {payload.title}
            </span>
          )}
        </PreviewCard.Popup>
      </PreviewCard.Positioner>
    </PreviewCard.Portal>
  )}
</PreviewCard.Root>

Controlled mode with multiple triggers

You can control the preview card's open state externally using the open and onOpenChange props on <PreviewCard.Root>. This allows you to manage the preview card's visibility based on your application's state. When using multiple triggers, you have to manage which trigger is active with the triggerId prop on <PreviewCard.Root> and the id prop on each <PreviewCard.Trigger>.

Note that there is no separate onTriggerIdChange prop. Instead, the onOpenChange callback receives an additional argument, eventDetails, which contains the trigger element that initiated the state change.

Animating the Preview Card

You can animate a preview card as it moves between different trigger elements. This includes animating its position, size, and content.

Position and Size

To animate the preview card's position, apply CSS transitions to the left, right, top, and bottom properties of the Positioner part. To animate its size, transition the width and height of the Popup part.

Content

The preview card also supports content transitions. This is useful when different triggers display different content within the same preview card.

To enable content animations, wrap the content in the <PreviewCard.Viewport> part. This part provides features to create direction-aware animations. It renders a div with a data-activation-direction attribute (left, right, up, or down) that indicates the new trigger's position relative to the previous one.

Inside the <PreviewCard.Viewport>, the content is further wrapped in divs with data attributes to help with styling:

• data-current: The currently visible content when no transitions are present or the incoming content.
• data-previous: The outgoing content during a transition.

You can use these attributes to style the enter and exit animations.

API reference