PostCSS is a tool for transforming styles with JS plugins. These plugins can lint your CSS, support variables and mixins, transpile future CSS syntax, inline images, and more.

PostCSS is used by industry leaders including Wikipedia, Twitter, Alibaba, and JetBrains. The Autoprefixer and Stylelint PostCSS plugins are some of the most popular CSS tools.

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PostCSS takes a CSS file and provides an API to analyze and modify its rules (by transforming them into an Abstract Syntax Tree). This API can then be used by plugins to do a lot of useful things, e.g., to find errors automatically, or to insert vendor prefixes.

Currently, PostCSS has more than 200 plugins. You can find all of the plugins in the plugins list. Below is a list of our favorite plugins — the best demonstrations of what can be built on top of PostCSS.

If you have any new ideas, PostCSS plugin development is really easy.

• postcss-use allows you to explicitly set PostCSS plugins within CSS and execute them only for the current file.
• postcss-modules and react-css-modules automatically isolate selectors within components.
• postcss-autoreset is an alternative to using a global reset that is better for isolatable components.
• postcss-initial adds all: initial support, which resets all inherited styles.
• cq-prolyfill adds container query support, allowing styles that respond to the width of the parent.

• autoprefixer adds vendor prefixes, using data from Can I Use.
• postcss-preset-env allows you to use future CSS features today.

• postcss-nested unwraps nested rules the way Sass does.
• postcss-sorting sorts the content of rules and at-rules.
• postcss-utilities includes the most commonly used shortcuts and helpers.
• short adds and extends numerous shorthand properties.

• postcss-url postcss plugin to rebase url(), inline or copy asset.
• postcss-sprites generates image sprites.
• font-magician generates all the @font-face rules needed in CSS.
• postcss-inline-svg allows you to inline SVG and customize its styles.
• postcss-write-svg allows you to write simple SVG directly in your CSS.
• webp-in-css to use WebP image format in CSS background.
• avif-in-css to use AVIF image format in CSS background.

• stylelint is a modular stylesheet linter.
• stylefmt is a tool that automatically formats CSS according stylelint rules.
• doiuse lints CSS for browser support, using data from Can I Use.
• colorguard helps you maintain a consistent color palette.

• cssnano is a modular CSS minifier.
• lost is a feature-rich calc() grid system.
• rtlcss mirrors styles for right-to-left locales.

PostCSS can transform styles in any syntax, not just CSS. If there is not yet support for your favorite syntax, you can write a parser and/or stringifier to extend PostCSS.

• sugarss is a indent-based syntax like Sass or Stylus.
• postcss-syntax switch syntax automatically by file extensions.
• postcss-html parsing styles in <style> tags of HTML-like files.
• postcss-markdown parsing styles in code blocks of Markdown files.
• postcss-styled-syntax parses styles in template literals CSS-in-JS like styled-components.
• postcss-jsx parsing CSS in template / object literals of source files.
• postcss-styled parsing CSS in template literals of source files.
• postcss-scss allows you to work with SCSS (but does not compile SCSS to CSS).
• postcss-sass allows you to work with Sass (but does not compile Sass to CSS).
• postcss-less allows you to work with Less (but does not compile LESS to CSS).
• postcss-less-engine allows you to work with Less (and DOES compile LESS to CSS using true Less.js evaluation).
• postcss-js allows you to write styles in JS or transform React Inline Styles, Radium or JSS.
• postcss-safe-parser finds and fixes CSS syntax errors.
• midas converts a CSS string to highlighted HTML.

• Some things you may think about PostCSS… and you might be wrong
• What PostCSS Really Is; What It Really Does
• PostCSS Guides

More articles and videos you can find on awesome-postcss list.

• Mastering PostCSS for Web Design by Alex Libby, Packt. (June 2016)

You can start using PostCSS in just two steps:

1. Find and add PostCSS extensions for your build tool.
2. Select plugins and add them to your PostCSS process.

The best way to use PostCSS with CSS-in-JS is astroturf. Add its loader to your webpack.config.js:

module.exports = {
  module: {
    rules: [
      {
        test: /\.css$/,
        use: ['style-loader', 'postcss-loader'],
      },
      {
        test: /\.jsx?$/,
        use: ['babel-loader', 'astroturf/loader'],
      }
    ]
  }
}

Then create postcss.config.js:

/** @type {import('postcss-load-config').Config} */
const config = {
  plugins: [
    require('autoprefixer'),
    require('postcss-nested')
  ]
}

module.exports = config

Parcel has built-in PostCSS support. It already uses Autoprefixer and cssnano. If you want to change plugins, create postcss.config.js in project’s root:

/** @type {import('postcss-load-config').Config} */
const config = {
  plugins: [
    require('autoprefixer'),
    require('postcss-nested')
  ]
}

module.exports = config

Parcel will even automatically install these plugins for you.

Please, be aware of the several issues in Version 1. Notice, Version 2 may resolve the issues via issue #2157.

Use postcss-loader in webpack.config.js:

module.exports = {
  module: {
    rules: [
      {
        test: /\.css$/,
        exclude: /node_modules/,
        use: [
          {
            loader: 'style-loader',
          },
          {
            loader: 'css-loader',
            options: {
              importLoaders: 1,
            }
          },
          {
            loader: 'postcss-loader'
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
}

Then create postcss.config.js:

/** @type {import('postcss-load-config').Config} */
const config = {
  plugins: [
    require('autoprefixer'),
    require('postcss-nested')
  ]
}

module.exports = config

Use gulp-postcss and gulp-sourcemaps.

gulp.task('css', () => {
  const postcss    = require('gulp-postcss')
  const sourcemaps = require('gulp-sourcemaps')

  return gulp.src('src/**/*.css')
    .pipe( sourcemaps.init() )
    .pipe( postcss([ require('autoprefixer'), require('postcss-nested') ]) )
    .pipe( sourcemaps.write('.') )
    .pipe( gulp.dest('build/') )
})

To use PostCSS from your command-line interface or with npm scripts there is postcss-cli.

postcss --use autoprefixer -o main.css css/*.css

If you want to compile CSS string in browser (for instance, in live edit tools like CodePen), just use Browserify or webpack. They will pack PostCSS and plugins files into a single file.

To apply PostCSS plugins to React Inline Styles, JSS, Radium and other CSS-in-JS, you can use postcss-js and transforms style objects.

const postcss  = require('postcss-js')
const prefixer = postcss.sync([ require('autoprefixer') ])

prefixer({ display: 'flex' }) //=> { display: ['-webkit-box', '-webkit-flex', '-ms-flexbox', 'flex'] }

• Grunt: @lodder/grunt-postcss
• HTML: posthtml-postcss
• Stylus: poststylus
• Rollup: rollup-plugin-postcss
• Brunch: postcss-brunch
• Broccoli: broccoli-postcss
• Meteor: postcss
• ENB: enb-postcss
• Taskr: taskr-postcss
• Start: start-postcss
• Connect/Express: postcss-middleware
• Svelte Preprocessor: svelte-preprocess

For other environments, you can use the JS API:

const autoprefixer = require('autoprefixer')
const postcss = require('postcss')
const postcssNested = require('postcss-nested')
const fs = require('fs')

fs.readFile('src/app.css', (err, css) => {
  postcss([autoprefixer, postcssNested])
    .process(css, { from: 'src/app.css', to: 'dest/app.css' })
    .then(result => {
      fs.writeFile('dest/app.css', result.css, () => true)
      if ( result.map ) {
        fs.writeFile('dest/app.css.map', result.map.toString(), () => true)
      }
    })
})

Read the PostCSS API documentation for more details about the JS API.

All PostCSS runners should pass PostCSS Runner Guidelines.

Most PostCSS runners accept two parameters:

• An array of plugins.
• An object of options.

Common options:

• syntax: an object providing a syntax parser and a stringifier.
• parser: a special syntax parser (for example, SCSS).
• stringifier: a special syntax output generator (for example, Midas).
• map: source map options.
• from: the input file name (most runners set it automatically).
• to: the output file name (most runners set it automatically).

In some situations it might be helpful to fail the build on any warning from PostCSS or one of its plugins. This guarantees that no warnings go unnoticed, and helps to avoid bugs. While there is no option to enable treating warnings as errors, it can easily be done by adding postcss-fail-on-warn plugin in the end of PostCSS plugins:

module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    require('autoprefixer'),
    require('postcss-fail-on-warn')
  ]
}

• csstools.postcss adds PostCSS support.
• smallcase.postcssense adds Intellisense for global classes

• Syntax-highlighting-for-PostCSS adds PostCSS highlight.

• postcss.vim adds PostCSS highlight.

To get support for PostCSS in WebStorm and other JetBrains IDEs you need to install this plugin.

To report a security vulnerability, please use the Tidelift security contact. Tidelift will coordinate the fix and disclosure.

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