Align content vs Align items in Flexbox (examples)
Use align-content or align-items for centering with Flexbox?
You need to master both Flexbox and CSS Grid in order to professionally build modern websites & web apps. If you haven't mastered both of them yet, I highly recommend going through my CSS Course.
Usually, to center flex items vertically we can use align-items
:
(I'm also using justify-content
here to center the flex-items horizontally)
But what if we have more flex-items or flex-items that are much bigger so that they wrap onto a new line?
If you still use align-items
then it will look weird. Now we actually need to use align-content
.
By the way, if you change the flex-direction
to column
, the align-items
and align-content
properties will now center horizontally instead of vertically. And the justify-content
property will now center vertically (so they 'flip').
Conclusion: use align-items
if you have just 1 row or 1 column of flex-items. Use align-content
if you have multiple rows or columns after flex-items wrap onto new lines.
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