Bootstrap’s form controls expand on our Rebooted form styles with classes. Use these classes to opt into their customized displays for a more consistent rendering across browsers and devices.
Be sure to use an
appropriate type attribute on all inputs (e.g., email for email address or number for numerical information) to take advantage of newer input controls like email verification, number selection, and more.
Here’s a quick example to demonstrate Bootstrap’s form styles. Keep reading for documentation on required classes, form layout, and more.
class="form-group">for="exampleInputEmail1">Email address
type="email"class="form-control"id="exampleInputEmail1"aria-describedby="emailHelp"placeholder="Enter email">id="emailHelp"class="form-text text-muted">We'll never share your email with anyone else.
class="form-group">for="exampleInputPassword1">Password
type="password"class="form-control"id="exampleInputPassword1"placeholder="Password">class="form-check">type="checkbox"class="form-check-input"id="exampleCheck1">class="form-check-label"for="exampleCheck1">Check me out
type="submit"class="btn btn-primary">Submit
Form controls
Textual form controls—like s, s, and
For file inputs, swap the .form-control for .form-control-file.
class="form-control form-control-lg">
Large select
class="form-control">
Default select
class="form-control form-control-sm">
Small select
Readonly
Add the readonly boolean attribute on an input to prevent modification of the input’s value. Read-only inputs appear lighter (just like disabled inputs), but retain the standard
cursor.
If you want to have elements in your form styled as plain text, use the .form-control-plaintext class to remove the default form field styling and preserve the correct margin and padding.
Default checkboxes and radios are improved upon with the help of .form-check, a single class for both input types that improves
the layout and behavior of their HTML elements. Checkboxes are for selecting one or several options in a list, while radios are for selecting one option from many.
Disabled checkboxes and radios are supported, but to provide a not-allowed cursor on hover of the parent , you’ll need to add the disabled attribute to the .form-check-input. The disabled attribute will apply a lighter color to help indicate the input’s state.
Checkboxes and radios use are built to support HTML-based
form validation and provide concise, accessible labels. As such, our s and s are sibling elements as opposed to an within a . This is slightly more verbose as you must specify id and for attributes to relate the and .
Default (stacked)
By default, any number of checkboxes and radios that are immediate sibling will be vertically stacked and appropriately spaced with .form-check.
class="form-check">class="form-check-input"type="radio"name="exampleRadios"id="exampleRadios1"value="option1"checked>class="form-check-label"for="exampleRadios1">
Default radio
class="form-check">class="form-check-input"type="radio"name="exampleRadios"id="exampleRadios2"value="option2">class="form-check-label"for="exampleRadios2">
Second default radio
class="form-check disabled">class="form-check-input"type="radio"name="exampleRadios"id="exampleRadios3"value="option3"disabled>class="form-check-label"for="exampleRadios3">
Disabled radio
Inline
Group checkboxes or radios on the same horizontal row by adding .form-check-inline to any .form-check.
Add .position-static to inputs within .form-check that don’t have any label text. Remember to still provide some form of label for assistive technologies (for instance, using aria-label).
Since Bootstrap applies display: block and width: 100% to almost all our form controls, forms will by default stack vertically. Additional classes can be used to vary this layout on a per-form basis.
Form groups
The .form-group class is the easiest way to add some structure to forms. It provides a flexible class that encourages proper grouping of labels, controls, optional help text, and form validation messaging. By default it only applies margin-bottom, but it picks up additional styles in .form-inline as needed. Use it with s,
More complex forms can be built using our grid
classes. Use these for form layouts that require multiple columns, varied widths, and additional alignment options.
You may also swap .row for .form-row, a variation of our standard grid row that overrides the default column gutters for tighter and more compact layouts.
More complex layouts can also be created with the grid system.
class="form-row">class="form-group col-md-6">for="inputEmail4">Email
type="email"class="form-control"id="inputEmail4"placeholder="Email">class="form-group col-md-6">for="inputPassword4">Password
type="password"class="form-control"id="inputPassword4"placeholder="Password">class="form-group">for="inputAddress">Address
type="text"class="form-control"id="inputAddress"placeholder="1234 Main St">class="form-group">for="inputAddress2">Address 2
type="text"class="form-control"id="inputAddress2"placeholder="Apartment, studio, or floor">class="form-row">class="form-group col-md-6">for="inputCity">City
type="text"class="form-control"id="inputCity">class="form-group col-md-4">for="inputState">State
id="inputState"class="form-control">selected>Choose...
...
class="form-group col-md-2">for="inputZip">Zip
type="text"class="form-control"id="inputZip">class="form-group">class="form-check">class="form-check-input"type="checkbox"id="gridCheck">class="form-check-label"for="gridCheck">
Check me out
type="submit"class="btn btn-primary">Sign in
Horizontal form
Create
horizontal forms with the grid by adding the .row class to form groups and using the .col-*-* classes to specify the width of your labels and controls. Be sure to add .col-form-label to your s as well so they’re vertically centered with their associated form controls.
At times, you maybe need to use margin or padding utilities to create that perfect alignment you need. For example, we’ve removed the padding-top on our stacked radio inputs label to better align the text baseline.
class="form-group row">for="inputEmail3"class="col-sm-2 col-form-label">Email
class="col-sm-10">type="email"class="form-control"id="inputEmail3"placeholder="Email">class="form-group row">for="inputPassword3"class="col-sm-2 col-form-label">Password
class="col-sm-10">type="password"class="form-control"id="inputPassword3"placeholder="Password">class="form-group">class="row">class="col-form-label col-sm-2 pt-0">Radios
class="col-sm-10">class="form-check">class="form-check-input"type="radio"name="gridRadios"id="gridRadios1"value="option1"checked>class="form-check-label"for="gridRadios1">
First radio
class="form-check">class="form-check-input"type="radio"name="gridRadios"id="gridRadios2"value="option2">class="form-check-label"for="gridRadios2">
Second radio
class="form-check disabled">class="form-check-input"type="radio"name="gridRadios"id="gridRadios3"value="option3"disabled>class="form-check-label"for="gridRadios3">
Third disabled radio
class="form-group row">class="col-sm-2">Checkbox
class="col-sm-10">class="form-check">class="form-check-input"type="checkbox"id="gridCheck1">class="form-check-label"for="gridCheck1">
Example checkbox
class="form-group row">class="col-sm-10">type="submit"class="btn btn-primary">Sign in
Horizontal form label sizing
Be sure to use .col-form-label-sm or .col-form-label-lg to your s or s to correctly follow the size of .form-control-lg and .form-control-sm.
As shown in the previous examples, our grid system allows you to place any number of .cols within a .row or .form-row. They’ll split the available width equally between them. You may also pick a subset of your columns to
take up more or less space, while the remaining .cols equally split the rest, with specific column classes like .col-7.
The example below uses a flexbox utility to vertically center the contents and changes .col to .col-auto so that your columns only take up as much space as needed. Put another way, the column sizes itself based on the contents.
Use the .form-inline class to display a series of labels, form controls, and buttons on a single horizontal row. Form controls within inline forms vary slightly from their default states.
Controls are display: flex, collapsing any HTML white space
and allowing you to provide alignment control with spacing and flexbox utilities.
Controls and input groups receive width: auto to override the Bootstrap default width: 100%.
Controls only appear inline in viewports that are at least 576px wide to account for narrow viewports on mobile devices.
You
may need to manually address the width and alignment of individual form controls with spacing utilities (as shown below). Lastly, be sure to always include a with each form control, even if you need to hide it from non-screenreader visitors with .sr-only.
Assistive technologies such as screen readers will have trouble with your forms if you don’t include a label for every input. For these inline forms, you can hide the labels using the .sr-only class. There are further alternative methods of providing a label for assistive technologies, such as the aria-label, aria-labelledby or title attribute. If none of these are present, assistive technologies may resort to using the placeholder attribute, if present, but note that use of
placeholder as a replacement for other labelling methods is not advised.
Help text
Block-level help text in forms can be created using .form-text (previously known as .help-block in v3). Inline help text can be flexibly implemented using any inline HTML element and utility classes like .text-muted.
Associating help text with form controls
Help text should be explicitly associated with the
form control it relates to using the aria-describedby attribute. This will ensure that assistive technologies—such as screen readers—will announce this help text when the user focuses or enters the control.
Help text below inputs can be styled with .form-text. This class includes display: block and adds some top margin for easy spacing from the inputs above.
Password Your password must be 8-20 characters long, contain letters
and numbers, and must not contain spaces, special characters, or emoji.
for="inputPassword5">Password
type="password"id="inputPassword5"class="form-control"aria-describedby="passwordHelpBlock">id="passwordHelpBlock"class="form-text text-muted">
Your password must be 8-20 characters long, contain letters and numbers, and must not contain spaces, special characters, or emoji.
Inline text can use any typical inline HTML element (be it a , , or something else) with nothing more than a utility class.
class="form-inline">class="form-group">for="inputPassword6">Password
type="password"id="inputPassword6"class="form-control mx-sm-3"aria-describedby="passwordHelpInline">id="passwordHelpInline"class="text-muted">
Must be 8-20 characters long.
Disabled forms
Add the disabled boolean attribute on an input to prevent user interactions and make it appear lighter.
Add the disabled attribute to a to disable
all the controls within.
disabled>class="form-group">for="disabledTextInput">Disabled input
type="text"id="disabledTextInput"class="form-control"placeholder="Disabled input">class="form-group">for="disabledSelect">Disabled select menu
id="disabledSelect"class="form-control">
Disabled select
class="form-check">class="form-check-input"type="checkbox"id="disabledFieldsetCheck"disabled>class="form-check-label"for="disabledFieldsetCheck">
Can't check this
type="submit"class="btn btn-primary">Submit
Caveat with anchors
By default, browsers will treat all native form controls (, and elements) inside a as disabled, preventing both keyboard and mouse interactions on them. However, if your form also includes elements, these will only be given a style of pointer-events: none. As noted in the section about
disabled state for buttons (and specifically in the sub-section for anchor elements), this CSS property is not yet standardized and isn’t fully supported in Opera 18 and below, or in Internet Explorer 10, and won’t prevent keyboard users from being able to focus or activate these links. So to be safe, use custom JavaScript to disable such links.
Cross-browser
compatibility
While Bootstrap will apply these styles in all browsers, Internet Explorer 11 and below don’t fully support the disabled attribute on a . Use custom JavaScript to disable the fieldset in these browsers.
Validation
Provide valuable, actionable feedback to your users with HTML5 form validation–available in all our supported browsers. Choose from the browser
default validation feedback, or implement custom messages with our built-in classes and starter JavaScript.
We highly recommend custom validation styles as native browser defaults are not announced to screen readers.
How it works
Here’s how form validation works with Bootstrap:
HTML form validation is applied via CSS’s two pseudo-classes, :invalid and :valid. It applies to , , and
