Bootstrap Affix Plugin (Advanced)

The Affix Plugin

The Affix plugin allows an element to become affixed (locked) to an area on the page. This is often used with navigation menus or social icon buttons, to make them "stick" at a specific area while scrolling up and down the page.

The plugin toggles this behavior on and off (changes the value of CSS position from static to fixed), depending on scroll position.

Example 1) An affixed navbar:

Example 2) An affixed sidebar:

With Affix, when we scroll up and down the page, the menu is always visible and locked in its position.

How To Create an Affixed Navigation Menu

The following example shows how to create a horizontal affixed navigation menu:

The following example shows how to create a vertical affixed navigation menu:

Example Explained

Add data-spy="affix" to the element you want affixed.

Optionally, add the data-offset-top|bottom attribute to calculate the position of the scroll.

How it works

The affix plugin toggles between three classes: .affix, .affix-top, and .affix-bottom. Each class represents a particular state. You must add CSS properties to handle the actual positions, with the exception of position:fixed on the .affix class.

• The plugin adds the .affix-top or .affix-bottom class to indicate the element is in its top-most or bottom-most position. Positioning with CSS is not required at this point.


• Scrolling past the affixed element triggers the actual affixing - This is where the plugin replaces the .affix-top or .affix-bottom class with the .affix class (sets position:fixed). At this point, you must add the CSS top or bottom property to position the affixed element in the page.


• If a bottom offset is defined, scrolling past it replaces the .affix class with .affix-bottom. Since offsets are optional, setting one requires you to set the appropriate CSS. In this case, add position:absolute when necessary.

In the first example above, the Affix plugin adds the .affix class (position:fixed) to the <nav> element when we have scrolled 197 pixels from the top. If you open the example, you will also see that we added the CSS top property with a value of 0 to the .affix class. This is to make sure that the navbar stays at the top of the page at all time, when we have scrolled 197 pixels from the top.

Scrollspy & Affix

Using the Affix plugin together with the Scrollspy plugin:

Complete Bootstrap Affix Reference

For a complete reference of all affix methods and events, go to our Bootstrap JS Affix Reference.