Toasts

Toasts are lightweight notifications designed to mimic the push notifications that have been popularized by mobile and desktop operating systems.

Toasts are intended to be small interruptions to your visitors or users, and therefore should contain minimal, to-the-point, non-interactive content. Please refer to the Accessibility tips section below for important usage information.

Overview

To encourage extensible and predictable toasts, we recommend providing a header (title) and body. Toast headers use the style 'display: flex', allowing easy alignment of content thanks to Bootstrap's margin and flexbox utility classes.

Toasts are slightly translucent, too, so they blend over whatever they might appear over. For browsers that support the backdrop-filter CSS property, they also attempt to blur the elements under the toast.

<template>
  <div class="p-3 bg-secondary progress-bar-striped" style="min-height: 170px;">
    <b-button class="mb-2" variant="primary" @click="$bvToast.show('example-toast')">
      Show toast
    </b-button>
    <b-toast id="example-toast" title="BootstrapVue" static no-auto-hide>
      Hello, world! This is a toast message.
    </b-toast>
  </div>
</template>

<!-- toast-intro.vue -->

Note: we are using the static prop in the above example to render the toast in-place in the document, rather than transporting it to a <b-toaster> target container. And we have added classes bg-secondary and progress-bar-striped to the outer <div> for illustrative purposes of toast transparency only.

Toast features and notes

• Toasts can be generated on demand via the injection this.$bvToast object, or manually created using the <b-toast> component.
• Titles are optional, but should be included, titles are rendered inside a <strong> element, unless using the toast-title slot.
• The close button at the top right of the toast can be removed via the no-close-button prop.
• A title bar is shown, unless you give no title and set the no-close-button prop.
• Auto-hiding occurs after 5000 ms, which can be changed via the auto-hide-delay prop, or disabled with the no-auto-hide prop.
• When auto-hide is enabled, while you hover over the toast, the auto-hide countdown will pause. You can disable this feature by setting the no-hover-pause prop to true.
• If you disable the auto-hide feature, avoid hiding the close button, or if you hide the close button be sure to allow the toast to auto-dismiss. Please refer to the Accessibility tips section below for important usage information.
• Toast transparency can be disabled by setting the solid prop to true.
• Toasts will show inside a named <b-toaster> target component. BootstrapVue comes with several pre-defined toaster targets. Toasts will check for the named toaster in the document before they are shown, and will dynamically create the named toaster target if one is not found.
• Toaster targets are defined completely with CSS for controlling the positioning of the contained <b-toast> components.
• Toasts can can targeted to any named toaster.
• Toasts are wrapped in a <div> with class b-toast to allow for Vue list-transition support when displayed in a toaster component.

BootstrapVue uses PortalVue to transport toasts into the toasters.

Toasts on demand

Generate a dynamic toast from anywhere in your app via the this.$bvToast Vue component instance injection, without the need to place a <b-toast> component in your app.

Use the this.$bvToast.toast() method to generate on demand toasts. The method accepts two arguments:

• message: the content of the toast body (either a string, or an array of VNodes). Required. Toasts with an empty message will not be shown. See the Advanced usage section for an example of passing an array of VNodes as the message.
• options: an optional options object for providing a title and/or additional configuration options. The title option can be either a string or an array of VNodes

The options argument accepts most of the props that the <b-toast> component accepts (with the exception of static, and visible) in camelCase name format instead of kebab-case.

<template>
  <div>
    <b-button @click="makeToast()">Show Toast</b-button>
    <b-button @click="makeToast(true)">Show Toast (appended)</b-button>
  </div>
</template>

<script>
  export default {
    data() {
      return {
        toastCount: 0
      }
    },
    methods: {
      makeToast(append = false) {
        this.toastCount++
        this.$bvToast.toast(`This is toast number ${this.toastCount}`, {
          title: 'BootstrapVue Toast',
          autoHideDelay: 5000,
          appendToast: append
        })
      }
    }
  }
</script>

<!-- toasts-bv-toast-example.vue -->

Once a toast which was generated using this.$bvToast.toast() has been hidden, it will automatically be destroyed and removed from the document.

Notes:

• The this.$bvToast injection is only available when using the full BootstrapVue plugin or the ToastPlugin plugin. It is not available if importing just the b-toast or b-toaster components. To just import the $bvToast injection, use the BVToastPlugin plugin.
• A new $bvToast injection (mixin) is created for each Vue virtual machine instance (i.e. each instantiated component), and is not usable via direct access to the Vue.prototype, as it needs access to the instance's this and $root contexts.
• Toasts generated via this.$bvToast.toast() are children of the Vue instance that calls the this.$bvToast.toast() method, and will be hidden and destroyed if that Vue instance (i.e. your component or app) is also destroyed. If the vm context is inside a <router-view>, and the $route changes, the toast will also be destroyed (as all the children of <router-view> are destroyed. To make on-demand toasts persist across router $route changes, use this.$root.$bvToast.toast() instead to make the toast's parent the root of your app.
• Toasts require a message. Toasts on demand with an empty message will silently not be shown.

Options

Toasts have various options that can control their style and behaviour. Options are available both as props on the <b-toast> component and as properties of the options object passed to this.$bvToast.toast(). When passing options to this.$bvToast.toast(), use the camelCase version of the component prop name, i.e. use noAutoHide instead of no-auto-hide.

Title

Add a title to your toast via the title option. Just like the toast message, the title can be a simple string, or an array of VNodes. See the Advanced usage section for an example of passing an array of VNodes as the message and title.

Transparency

Toasts have a semi-transparent background by default. To disable the default transparency, just set the solid prop to true to remove the alpha channel from the background color.

Transparency can also be altered via the BootstrapVue custom SCSS variable $b-toast-background-opacity when using the SCSS files rather than CSS files. Refer to the Theming reference section.

Variants

BootstrapVue toasts provide custom CSS to define color variants. Variants follow the standard Bootstrap v4 variant names. If you have custom SCSS defined Bootstrap color theme variants, the toast custom SCSS will automatically create toast variants for you (refer to the Theming reference section).

<template>
  <div>
    <b-button @click="makeToast()" class="mb-2">Default</b-button>
    <b-button variant="primary" @click="makeToast('primary')" class="mb-2">Primary</b-button>
    <b-button variant="secondary" @click="makeToast('secondary')" class="mb-2">Secondary</b-button>
    <b-button variant="danger" @click="makeToast('danger')" class="mb-2">Danger</b-button>
    <b-button variant="warning" @click="makeToast('warning')" class="mb-2">Warning</b-button>
    <b-button variant="success" @click="makeToast('success')" class="mb-2">Success</b-button>
    <b-button variant="info" @click="makeToast('info')" class="mb-2">Info</b-button>
  </div>
</template>

<script>
  export default {
    methods: {
      makeToast(variant = null) {
        this.$bvToast.toast('Toast body content', {
          title: `Variant ${variant || 'default'}`,
          variant: variant,
          solid: true
        })
      }
    }
  }
</script>

<!-- toast-variants.vue -->

Toaster target

BootstrapVue comes with the following "built-in" toaster names (and associated styles defined in SCSS):

• b-toaster-top-right
• b-toaster-top-left
• b-toaster-top-center
• b-toaster-top-full
• b-toaster-bottom-right
• b-toaster-bottom-left
• b-toaster-bottom-center
• b-toaster-bottom-full

<template>
  <div>
    <b-button @click="toast('b-toaster-top-right')" class="mb-2">b-toaster-top-right</b-button>
    <b-button @click="toast('b-toaster-top-left')" class="mb-2">b-toaster-top-left</b-button>
    <b-button @click="toast('b-toaster-top-center')" class="mb-2">b-toaster-top-center</b-button>
    <b-button @click="toast('b-toaster-top-full')" class="mb-2">b-toaster-top-full</b-button>
    <b-button @click="toast('b-toaster-bottom-right', true)" class="mb-2">b-toaster-bottom-right</b-button>
    <b-button @click="toast('b-toaster-bottom-left', true)" class="mb-2">b-toaster-bottom-left</b-button>
    <b-button @click="toast('b-toaster-bottom-center', true)" class="mb-2">b-toaster-bottom-center</b-button>
    <b-button @click="toast('b-toaster-bottom-full', true)" class="mb-2">b-toaster-bottom-full</b-button>
  </div>
</template>

<script>
  export default {
    data() {
      return {
        counter: 0
      }
    },
    methods: {
      toast(toaster, append = false) {
        this.counter++
        this.$bvToast.toast(`Toast ${this.counter} body content`, {
          title: `Toaster ${toaster}`,
          toaster: toaster,
          solid: true,
          appendToast: append
        })
      }
    }
  }
</script>

<!-- toast-targets.vue -->

Notes:

• Toaster target names that have not been defined in CSS will render at the bottom of the document, stacked and not positioned (appended to <body> inside a <b-toaster> with class name and ID set to the toaster target name). The only default styling the toaster will have is a z-index of 1100.
• Avoid using b-toaster-top-* toasters together, or b-toaster-bottom-* toasters together, at the same time in your app as notifications could be obscured/overlap on small screens (i.e. xs).

Prepend and append

Toasts default to prepending themselves to the top of the toasts shown in the specified toaster in the order they were created. To append new toasts to the bottom, set the append-toast prop to true.

Auto-hide

Change to auto hide delay time via the auto-hide-delay prop (value is in milliseconds), which defaults to 5000 (minimum value 1000). Or, disable the auto-hide feature completely by setting the no-auto-hide prop to true.

When auto-hide is enabled, hovering over the toast will pause the auto-hide timer. When you un-hover the toast, the auto-hide timer will be resumed. You can disable this feature by setting the no-hover-pause prop to true.

Toast roles

Toasts are rendered with a default role attribute of 'alert' and aria-live attribute of 'assertive'. For toasts that are meant for a casual notification, set the is-status prop to true, which will change the role and aria-live attributes to 'status' and 'polite' respectively.

For more information, please the the Accessibility section below.

Links

Optionally convert the toast body to a link (<a>) or <router-link> (or <nuxt-link>) via the href and to props respectively. When set, the entire toast body becomes a link.

<template>
  <div>
    <b-button @click="toast()">Toast with link</b-button>
  </div>
</template>

<script>
  export default {
    methods: {
      toast() {
        this.$bvToast.toast(`Toast with action link`, {
          href: '#foo',
          title: 'Example'
        })
      }
    }
  }
</script>

<!-- toast-link.vue -->

<b-toast> component

When you have a custom component that would like to display just a single toast at a time, use the <b-toast> component. The <b-toast> component can be placed anywhere in your custom component or app, and does not render an element (they render a comment placeholder node which will not affect layout).

The toast can be made visible via a v-model (which is tied to the visible prop), or shown using the component's show() and hide() instance methods, or via the this.$bvToast.show(id) and this.$bvToast.hide(id) methods (requires that a unique ID be set on the <b-toast> component).

Toasts, by default will be paced into the b-toaster-top-right <b-toaster> component. The toaster specified by the toaster prop will be created on demand if it doesn't already exist in document.

You can force a <b-toast> to appear in-place in the document by setting the static prop to true. you still need to show and hide the toast, but it will not be transported into a toaster component.

<template>
  <div>
    <b-button @click="$bvToast.show('my-toast')">Show toast</b-button>

    <b-toast id="my-toast" variant="warning" solid>
      <template v-slot:toast-title>
        <div class="d-flex flex-grow-1 align-items-baseline">
          <b-img blank blank-color="#ff5555" class="mr-2" width="12" height="12"></b-img>
          <strong class="mr-auto">Notice!</strong>
          <small class="text-muted mr-2">42 seconds ago</small>
        </div>
      </template>
      This is the content of the toast.
      It is short and to the point.
    </b-toast>
  </div>
</template>

<!-- toast-component.vue -->

Slots

• toast-title: Content to replace the default title element.
• default: Content of the toast body

Both slots are optionally scoped with the following scope:

Slots are only available when using the <b-toast> component.

<b-toaster> target component

The <b-toaster> component provides a container where toasts will appear (the Toaster). Toasters require a unique name, and toasts can be targeted to appear in a specific named toaster.

In most cases you will not need to directly use this component, as <b-toast> will automatically insert a <b-toaster> component (appended to <body>) with the requested toaster name if one is not found in the document. But sometimes you may want to explicitly place a toaster in your app.

The toaster name becomes the ID of the inserted container, and will also be used a class name on the rendered toaster container.

Toaster positioning and the positioning of toasts inside the toaster is driven completely by CSS classes (based on the name of the toaster)

The following "built-in" toaster names (and associated styles) are defined in BootstrapVue's custom SCSS:

• b-toaster-top-right
• b-toaster-top-left
• b-toaster-top-center
• b-toaster-top-full
• b-toaster-bottom-right
• b-toaster-bottom-left
• b-toaster-bottom-center
• b-toaster-bottom-full

The above toasters place the toasts in a stacked (columnar format), fixed within the viewport (meaning they will always be in view regardless of viewport scroll position). If there are more toasts than can fit on the viewport screen, some will be visually hidden offscreen until other toasts are closed/hidden.

<b-toast> uses the b-toaster-top-right toaster by default.

Notes:

• If a <b-toaster> with the same name already exists in document (either auto-created by <b-toast>, this.$bvToast.toast(), or manually placed), then <b-toaster> will just render an empty <div> element and issue a console warning.
• If manually placing a <b-toaster> component, make sure it is placed as the last element in bottom of your app root element, so that it will be available to all pages in your app.
• Toasters that get destroyed will be auto re-created if a new toast targeted for the toaster name is shown.
• In the majority of use cases, you should not need to manually place/create a <b-toaster> component in your app, as they will be auto generated on demand if needed. But if you need to override any of the toaster default settings, ensure that you place the toaster in your app in a location that will not be destroyed due to changes in the route.

Advanced usage

When using the this.$bvToast.toast(...) method for generating toasts, you may want the toast content to be more than just a string message. As mentioned in the Toasts on demand section above, you can pass arrays of VNodes as the message and title for more complex content.

Remember to keep toast content simple and to the point. Avoid placing interactive components or elements inside toasts, as this can cause issues for users of assistive technologies. Refer to the Accessibility section below.

Below is an example of using Vue's this.$createElement() method for generating more complex toast content:

<template>
  <div>
    <b-button @click="popToast">Show Toast with custom content</b-button>
  </div>
</template>

<script>
  export default {
    data() {
      return {
        count: 0
      }
    },
    methods: {
      popToast() {
        // Use a shorter name for this.$createElement
        const h = this.$createElement
        // Increment the toast count
        this.count++
        // Create the message
        const vNodesMsg = h(
          'p',
          { class: ['text-center', 'mb-0'] },
          [
            h('b-spinner', { props: { type: 'grow', small: true } }),
            ' Flashy ',
            h('strong', 'toast'),
            ` message #${this.count} `,
            h('b-spinner', { props: { type: 'grow', small: true } })
          ]
        )
        // Create the title
        const vNodesTitle = h(
          'div',
          { class: ['d-flex', 'flex-grow-1', 'align-items-baseline', 'mr-2'] },
          [
            h('strong', { class: 'mr-2' }, 'The Title'),
            h('small', { class: 'ml-auto text-italics' }, '5 minutes ago')
          ]
        )
        // Pass the VNodes as an array for message and title
        this.$bvToast.toast([vNodesMsg], {
          title: [vNodesTitle],
          solid: true,
          variant: 'info'
        })
      }
    }
 }
</script>

<!-- toasts-advanced.vue -->

Alerts versus toasts

In some cases you may need just a simple alert style message (i.e. cookie usage notifications, etc.). In these cases it is usually better to use an fixed position alert instead of a toast, by applying a few Bootstrap utility classes and a small bit of custom styling on a <b-alert> component:

<template>
  <div>
    <b-button size="sm" @click="showBottom = !showBottom">
      {{ showBottom ? 'Hide' : 'Show' }} Fixed bottom Alert
    </b-button>
    <b-alert
      v-model="showBottom"
      class="position-fixed fixed-bottom m-0 rounded-0"
      style="z-index: 2000;"
      variant="warning"
      dismissible
    >
      Fixed position (bottom) alert!
    </b-alert>

    <b-button size="sm" @click="showTop = !showTop">
      {{ showTop ? 'Hide' : 'Show' }} Fixed top Alert
    </b-button>
    <b-alert
      v-model="showTop"
      class="position-fixed fixed-top m-0 rounded-0"
      style="z-index: 2000;"
      variant="success"
      dismissible
    >
      Fixed position (top) alert!
    </b-alert>
  </div>
</template>

<script>
export default {
  data() {
    return {
      showBottom: false,
      showTop: false
    }
  }
}
</script>

<!-- fixed-position-alerts.vue -->

We use class position-fixed to set the positioning to fixed within the user's viewport, and either class fixed-bottom or fixed-top to position the alert on the bottom or top of the viewport. Class m-0 removes the default margins around the alert and rounded-0 removes the default rounded corners. We also set the z-index to a large value to ensure the alert appears over any other content on the page (the default for fixed-top and fixed-bottom is 1030). You may need to adjust the z-index for your specific layout.

Since the alert markup remains in the DOM where you placed the <b-alert> component, its tab sequence (for accessing the dismiss button) is easily accessible to screen reader and keyboard-only users.

Accessibility

Toasts are intended to be small interruptions to your visitors or users, so to help those with screen readers and similar assistive technologies, toasts are wrapped in an aria-live region. Changes to live regions (such as injecting/updating a toast component) are automatically announced by screen readers without needing to move the user's focus or otherwise interrupt the user. Additionally, aria-atomic="true" is automatically set to ensure that the entire toast is always announced as a single (atomic) unit, rather than announcing what was changed (which could lead to problems if you only update part of the toast's content, or if displaying the same toast content at a later point in time).

If you just need a single simple message to appear along the bottom or top of the user's window, use a fixed position <b-alert> instead.

Accessibility tips

Typically, toast messages should display one or two-line non-critical messages that do not require user interaction. Without taking extra steps, toasts can have numerous accessibility issues that can impact both people with and without disabilities. The following list, while not complete, provides general guidelines when using toasts.

• If the information needed is important for the process, e.g. for a list of errors in a form, then use the <b-alert> component instead of <b-toast>.
• <b-toast>, by default, sets the attributes role to 'alert' and aria-live to 'assertive'. If it's an important message like an error, this default setting is appropriate, otherwise set the prop is-status to true which will change the attributes role to 'status' and aria-live to 'polite'.
• Avoid popping up a toast message on page load. Performing unexpected actions on page load is very confusing to screen reader users. If a toast is needed on page load or route change, delay showing the toast by several seconds so that the screen reader will finishing announcing information about the current page without interruption by a the toast.
• When setting prop no-auto-hide to true, you must have a close button to allow users to dismiss the toast. If you have also set prop no-close-button to true, you must provide your own close button or dismiss the toast by some other means. Toasts have a tab index of 0 so that they can be reached by keyboard-only users.
• Avoid initiating many toasts in quick succession, as screen readers may interrupt reading the current toast and announce the new toast, causing the context of the previous toast to be missed.
• For toasts with long textual content, adjust the auto-hide-delay to a larger timout, to allow users time to read the content of the toast. A good length of time to keep messages up is 4 seconds plus 1 extra second for every 100 words, rounding up. This is approximately how fast the average person reads. That means the shortest default that should be used as a best practice is 5 seconds (5000ms). In addition to a reasonable default timeout, you could also allow the user to choose how long they want toasts to stay up for. Most people inherently understand whether they are fast or slow readers. Having a profile setting that is part of the user login will allow slow readers to pick a longer time if the messages are going away too fast, and fast readers to pick a short time if the messages are staying up too long.
• To account for memory loss and distraction as well as disability-related issues such as ADHD, a best practice would be to implement a location where users can refer to a list of past toast messages which have been shown. Preferably this list should be sortable, with the default being chronological.

Internet Explorer screen reader support

Unfortunately, IE 11 when used with NVDA or JAWS screen readers, will not properly announce/voice toasts when they appear. If you have a large non-sighted user-base using IE 11, you may want to create an additional off-screen aria-live region for IE 11 browsers only (created on page load) where copies of toast message text are placed dynamically, in addition to displaying toasts.