Animating a Smooth CSS Grid-Column Change

Can I animate grid-column?

It doesn't appear that you can, in the sense you mean, animate grid-column, based on the documentation over at Mozilla: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/grid-column

Grid column's animation type is discrete, meaning there's no "tweening" or interpolation.

That's a bummer.

There are some hacky (or in other cases, JS-heavy) workarounds, but YMMV according to how much effort you want to put into it. See this thread, for example:

animating a smooth css grid-column change

Using CSS transitions in CSS Grid Layout

According to the spec, transitions should work on grid-template-columns and grid-template-rows.

7.2. Explicit Track Sizing: the grid-template-rows and
grid-template-columns
properties

Animatable: as a simple list of length, percentage, or calc, provided
the only differences are the values of the length, percentage, or calc
components in the list

So, if my interpretation is correct, as long as the only changes are to the values of the properties, with no changes to the structure of the rule, transitions should work. But they don't.

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UPDATE

This does work but is so far only implemented in Firefox. Follow here
for other browser updates.
https://codepen.io/matuzo/post/animating-css-grid-layout-properties

~ a contribution in the comments by @bcbrian

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Here's a test I created:

grid-container {  display: inline-grid;  grid-template-columns: 100px 20vw 200px;  grid-template-rows: repeat(2, 100px);  background-color: black;  height: 230px;  transition: 2s;    /* non-essential */  grid-gap: 10px;  padding: 10px;  box-sizing: border-box;}
grid-container:hover {  grid-template-columns: 50px 10vw 100px;  grid-template-rows: repeat(2, 50px);  background-color: red;  height: 130px;  transition: 2s;}
grid-item {  background-color: lightgreen;}

<grid-container>  <grid-item></grid-item>  <grid-item></grid-item>  <grid-item></grid-item>  <grid-item></grid-item>  <grid-item></grid-item>  <grid-item></grid-item></grid-container>

Grid Element expand animations using CSS

Here's an example seemingly doing what you want, coded from scratch, without any JavaScript. I used flexbox instead of grid, but it can be achieved with grid as well. I used :hover as a trigger:

body {  padding: 15px;  background-color: #999;  margin: 0;}
.grid>*:hover, .grid>*>*:hover {  flex-grow: 3;}
.grid>*>*:hover {  box-shadow: 0 4px 5px -2px rgba(0, 0, 0, .2), 0 7px 10px 1px rgba(0, 0, 0, .14), 0 2px 16px 1px rgba(0, 0, 0, .12);  z-index: 1;  opacity: 1;  font-size: 5rem;}.grid:hover>*:not(:hover) {  flex-grow: 0;  max-height: 0;  overflow: hidden;}.grid>*,.grid>*>* {  transition: all .6s cubic-bezier(0.5, 0, 0.3, 1);}
.grid {  flex-direction: column;  min-height: calc(100vh - 30px);  box-sizing: border-box;}
.grid,.grid>* {  display: flex;  max-height: 100%;}
.grid>* {  flex-direction: row;  margin: 0;}
.grid>*,.grid>*>* {  flex-grow: 1;}
.grid>*>* {  margin: 0;  z-index: 0;  position: relative;  background-color: #fff;  outline: 1px solid #ddd;  opacity: .95;  display: flex;  align-items: center;  justify-content: center;  line-height: 0;  font-size: 3rem;  overflow: hidden;}

<div class="grid">  <div>    <div>1</div>    <div>2</div>  </div>  <div>    <div>3</div>    <div>4</div>    <div>5</div>    <div>6</div>  </div>  <div>    <div>7</div>    <div>8</div>    <div>9</div>  </div></div>

Grid-template-columns animation

grid-template-columns could be animated, but unfortunately - as of today - there is no support in any of the known browsers, yet. However, you can animate (grid-)gap, (grid-)row-gap or (grid-)column-gap in all browsers, except Safari.

bootstrap 4 animate column width change

Since Bootstrap 4 uses flexbox, CSS transition animations don't work unless you use set a numeric flex-grow or flex-shrink on the columns.

.col-8 {
  flex-grow: 1;
  transition: all 400ms ease;
}

.col-0 {
  width: 0; 
  flex-shrink: 1;
  transition: all 400ms ease;
}

Demo: http://www.codeply.com/go/4Un0Q8CvkQ

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To animate the grid columns as they change the media query breakpoints (instead of toggle classes via jQuery), you can simply use a CSS transition on the grid columns.

.row [class*='col-'] {
    transition: all 0.5s ease-in-out;
}

Demo: https://www.codeply.com/go/IHUZcvNjPS

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