Calculating Viewport Height on Chrome Android with CSS

Calculating Viewport Height on Chrome Android with CSS

Here's what I went with:

HTML

<div id="selector"></div>

CSS

#selector {
   height: 100vh;
}

JQUERY

function calcVH() {
    $('#selector').innerHeight( $(this).innerHeight() );
}
(function($) { 
  calcVH();
  $(window).on('orientationchange', function() {
    calcVH();
  });
})(jQuery);

PURE JS (NO JQUERY)

function calcVH() {
  var vH = Math.max(document.documentElement.clientHeight, window.innerHeight || 0);
  document.getElementById("selector").setAttribute("style", "height:" + vH + "px;");
}
calcVH();
window.addEventListener('onorientationchange', calcVH, true);

Simply change #selector to whatever your css selector is. If you use the pure js version you need to use an ID unless you change .getElementByID to .getElementsByClassName.

I'm only aware of this being a problem in Mobile Chrome Android, but I'm guessing it's the same for Chrome iOS as well. You could easily add a mobile detect option if you wanted so this only runs when you need it to. Personally I use Detectizr which works well, but to be honest, since it's pretty lightweight as it is, adding something like this is probably not worth it unless you're already using it.

Hopefully this gets fixed soon so a javascript solution isn't necessary. Also, I tried adding the resize event in case the browser width resizes, but after seeing this question I removed it from my answer. If you want to try using those just change the above to:

JQUERY

function calcVH() {
    $('#selector').innerHeight( $(this).innerHeight() );
}
(function($) { 
  calcVH();
  $(window).on('orientationchange resize', function() {
    calcVH();
  });
})(jQuery);

$(window).on('resize orientationchange', function() {

PURE JS (NO JQUERY)

function calcVH() {
  var vH = Math.max(document.documentElement.clientHeight, window.innerHeight || 0);
  document.getElementById("selector").setAttribute("style", "height:" + vH + "px;");
}
calcVH();
window.addEventListener('onorientationchange', calcVH, true);
window.addEventListener('resize', calcVH, true);

CSS3 100vh not constant in mobile browser

Unfortunately this is intentional…

This is a well know issue (at least in safari mobile), which is intentional, as it prevents other problems. Benjamin Poulain replied to a webkit bug:

This is completely intentional. It took quite a bit of work on our part to achieve this effect. :)

The base problem is this: the visible area changes dynamically as you scroll. If we update the CSS viewport height accordingly, we need to update the layout during the scroll. Not only that looks like shit, but doing that at 60 FPS is practically impossible in most pages (60 FPS is the baseline framerate on iOS).

It is hard to show you the “looks like shit” part, but imagine as you scroll, the contents moves and what you want on screen is continuously shifting.

Dynamically updating the height was not working, we had a few choices: drop viewport units on iOS, match the document size like before iOS 8, use the small view size, use the large view size.

From the data we had, using the larger view size was the best compromise. Most website using viewport units were looking great most of the time.

Nicolas Hoizey has researched this quite a bit: https://nicolas-hoizey.com/2015/02/viewport-height-is-taller-than-the-visible-part-of-the-document-in-some-mobile-browsers.html

No fix planned

At this point, there is not much you can do except refrain from using viewport height on mobile devices. Chrome changed to this as well in 2016:

• https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/blink-dev/BK0oHURgmJ4
• https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2016/12/url-bar-resizing

Get Android Chrome Browser Address bar height in JS

Best approach for me was to have something like that:

$(document).ready(function(){   

var viewportHeight = Math.max(document.documentElement.clientHeight, window.innerHeight || 0);
var viewportWidth = Math.max(document.documentElement.clientWidth, window.innerWidth || 0);
var isPortrait = viewportHeight > viewportWidth;

$( window ).resize(onresize);

function onresize() {
        var newViewportHeight = Math.max(document.documentElement.clientHeight, window.innerHeight || 0);
        var newViewportWidth = Math.max(document.documentElement.clientWidth, window.innerWidth || 0);
        var hasOrientationChanged = (newViewportHeight > newViewportWidth) != isPortrait;
        var addressbarHeight = 130;

        if (!hasOrientationChanged && (newViewportHeight != viewportHeight)) {
            addressbarHeight = Math.abs(newViewportHeight - viewportHeight);
            if (newViewportHeight < viewportHeight) {
                // Android Chrome address bar has appeared
            } else {
                // Android Chrome address bar has disappeared
            }
        } else if(hasOrientationChanged) {
            // Orientation change
        }

        viewportHeight = newViewportHeight;
        viewportWidth = newViewportWidth;
        isPortrait = viewportHeight > viewportWidth;
}
});

Infamous height:100% issue on chrome for android - address bar

I was able to solve this issue by

Creating a css variable (variables.scss)

:root {
  --viewport-height: 100%;
}

Instead of using 100% use var(--viewport-height)

height: calc(100% - 55px);

becomes

height: calc(var(--viewport-height) - 55px);

Then binding to the visualViewport.resize event (MUST use addEventListener here)

if (!serverSide) {
  visualViewport.addEventListener('resize', () => {
    document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--viewport-height', `${visualViewport.height}px`);
  });
}

Make sure there is no transition set for the height property.

CSS variables are supported by all major browsers.

• VisualViewport docs
• Linked-from-docs Demo with source code
• Commit reference

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