The Environment-Aware Wrapper

Here’s a handy CSS technique to make sure your content isn’t obscured by the pesky notch that seems to be present on many phones these days, and it probably already fits nicely into your existing codebase!

You can hover/tap each of the Wrapper blocks to see some guidelines showing the size of the Wrapper’s padding a bit better.

I wrote more about this on my website:
chrisburnell.com/article/environment-aware-wrapper

Jump to the code snippet ↓

1em

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum suscipit id nulla vitae maximus. In bibendum risus in commodo fermentum. Vestibulum elementum turpis ac aliquam pulvinar. Nulla vitae varius lorem.

1em with notch

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum suscipit id nulla vitae maximus. In bibendum risus in commodo fermentum. Vestibulum elementum turpis ac aliquam pulvinar. Nulla vitae varius lorem.

1em with notch , adjusted

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum suscipit id nulla vitae maximus. In bibendum risus in commodo fermentum. Vestibulum elementum turpis ac aliquam pulvinar. Nulla vitae varius lorem.

2em

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum suscipit id nulla vitae maximus. In bibendum risus in commodo fermentum. Vestibulum elementum turpis ac aliquam pulvinar. Nulla vitae varius lorem.

2em with notch

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum suscipit id nulla vitae maximus. In bibendum risus in commodo fermentum. Vestibulum elementum turpis ac aliquam pulvinar. Nulla vitae varius lorem.

2em with notch , adjusted

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum suscipit id nulla vitae maximus. In bibendum risus in commodo fermentum. Vestibulum elementum turpis ac aliquam pulvinar. Nulla vitae varius lorem.

8vw (make sure you check these out at different viewport widths!)

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum suscipit id nulla vitae maximus. In bibendum risus in commodo fermentum. Vestibulum elementum turpis ac aliquam pulvinar. Nulla vitae varius lorem.

8vw with notch

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum suscipit id nulla vitae maximus. In bibendum risus in commodo fermentum. Vestibulum elementum turpis ac aliquam pulvinar. Nulla vitae varius lorem.

8vw with notch , adjusted

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum suscipit id nulla vitae maximus. In bibendum risus in commodo fermentum. Vestibulum elementum turpis ac aliquam pulvinar. Nulla vitae varius lorem.

The notch shown in the code examples above and the respective sizes used are purely for demo purposes, so it probably won’t actually display nicely on a notch-obscured device!

I recommend that you use the code below if you plan to integrate it into your project, making sure to replace the default max-inline-size and gutter values with ones that make sense for you.

.wrap {
	inline-size: 100%;
	max-inline-size: var(--max-inline-size, 100%);
	padding-inline: var(--gutter, 1em);
	margin-inline: auto;

	@supports (padding: max(0px)) {
		padding-inline-start: max(
			env(safe-area-inset-left),
			var(--gutter, 1em)
		);
		padding-inline-end: max(
			env(safe-area-inset-right),
			var(--gutter, 1em)
		);
	}
}