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Scroll-triggered animations

Animation & Transitions

animation-timeline: view() and scroll()

Limited availabilityderived from web-features, captured 2026-09-06
  • Chrome115
  • Edge115
  • Firefox-
  • Safari26

Features it needs

Reveal-on-scroll libraries watch elements with an IntersectionObserver and add a class. animation-timeline replaces the observer with a timeline: view() ties an animation's progress to the element's position in the viewport, and scroll() ties it to a scroll container's offset. These run off the main thread, so they hold up under load in a way that a scroll listener does not. Fade-in-on-scroll is a progressive enhancement, so the fallback is simply that the content is visible, which is the correct default anyway.

When this applies

Fading or moving elements in as they scroll into view, or driving a reading-progress bar.

The native approach

animation-timeline: view() and scroll()
@keyframes fade-in {
  from {
    opacity: 0;
    translate: 0 2rem;
  }
}

@media (prefers-reduced-motion: no-preference) {
  @supports (animation-timeline: view()) {
    .reveal {
      animation: fade-in linear both;
      animation-timeline: view();
      /* Run from entering the viewport to 40% up it. */
      animation-range: entry 0% cover 40%;
    }
  }
}

/* A reading-progress bar, no JavaScript. */
@keyframes grow {
  from {
    scale: 0 1;
  }
}
.progress {
  animation: grow linear both;
  animation-timeline: scroll(root block);
  transform-origin: left;
}
Live example

MDN reference

When the dependency is still right

An answer that always says "the platform covers it" is worse than no answer. These are the cases where this one does not hold.

  • You need Firefox support. Chrome 115 and Safari 26 ship scroll-driven animations but Firefox does not, so wrap them in @supports and make sure the un-animated state is the visible one.
  • You need a callback in JavaScript when an element enters view, for analytics, lazy loading or infinite scroll. That is what IntersectionObserver is for and CSS does not replace it.
  • You need to animate something that is not a descendant of, or a sibling reachable from, the scrolling element. Timeline scope is limited.
  • The animation must run once and stay put. A view timeline is scrubbed, so it reverses when the user scrolls back up.
  • You are using the library's IntersectionObserver for anything other than animation, in which case removing it changes unrelated behaviour.

Building it

This catalog stops at the swap. These guides go through the implementation and the fallbacks. They come from Google Chrome's modern-web-guidance, Apache-2.0.

Packages this covers

Minified and gzipped, captured 2026-09-06.