CODEWITHSUNDEEP
csstwitter-bootstrapbootstrap-4navbar
LuTz
LuTz

Reputation: 1523

Center an element in Bootstrap Navbar

No matter what I try, I can't center something in Bootstrap navbar, any solutions for it?

I've tried adding a div, using margin:0 auto; or margin-right:auto; margin-left:auto;, used center-block class. Nothing works, why is so hard to achieve something so simple I can't understand, what I'm doing wrong?

Here's the current code :

<nav class="navbar navbar-fixed-top navbar-dark main-nav">
<div class="container">
    <ul class="nav navbar-nav pull-left">
        <li class="nav-item active">
            <a class="nav-link" href="#">Home</a>
        </li>
        <li class="nav-item">
            <a class="nav-link" href="#">Download</a>
        </li>
        <li class="nav-item">
            <a class="nav-link" href="#">Register</a>
        </li>
    </ul>

    <ul class="nav navbar-nav text-center">
        <li class="nav-item"><a class="nav-link" href="#">Website Name</a></li>
    </ul>

    <ul class="nav navbar-nav pull-right">
        <li class="nav-item">
            <a class="nav-link" href="#">Rates</a>
        </li>
        <li class="nav-item">
            <a class="nav-link" href="#">Help</a>
        </li>
        <li class="nav-item">
            <a class="nav-link" href="#">Contact</a>
        </li>
    </ul>
</div>

Upvotes: 64

Views: 204022

Answers (10)

Jashvita
Jashvita

Reputation: 661

I had an issue to center the text. It was fixed by the navbar-text

<ul class="nav navbar-nav navbar-right">
   <li class="navbar-text">
    @*@Html.ActionLink("Hello " + userName,"Index", "Manage", routeValues: null, 
htmlAttributes: new { title = "Manage", onclick = "javascript:return false;" 
})*@
  
 <p style="color: #999999;"> Hello  @userName</p>
</li>

Upvotes: 0

Carol Skelly
Carol Skelly

Reputation: 362360

Update Bootstrap 5 (2021)

The Navbar still uses flexbox so alignment works the same way as Bootstrap 4.

Update Bootstrap 4.1+

Bootstrap 4 the navbar now uses flexbox so the Website Name can be centered using mx-auto. The left and right side menus don't require floats.

<nav class="navbar navbar-expand-md navbar-fixed-top navbar-dark bg-dark main-nav">
    <div class="container">
        <ul class="nav navbar-nav">
            <li class="nav-item active">
                <a class="nav-link" href="#">Home</a>
            </li>
            <li class="nav-item">
                <a class="nav-link" href="#">Download</a>
            </li>
            <li class="nav-item">
                <a class="nav-link" href="#">Register</a>
            </li>
        </ul>
        <ul class="nav navbar-nav mx-auto">
            <li class="nav-item"><a class="nav-link" href="#">Website Name</a></li>
        </ul>
        <ul class="nav navbar-nav">
            <li class="nav-item">
                <a class="nav-link" href="#">Rates</a>
            </li>
            <li class="nav-item">
                <a class="nav-link" href="#">Help</a>
            </li>
            <li class="nav-item">
                <a class="nav-link" href="#">Contact</a>
            </li>
        </ul>
    </div>
</nav>

Navbar center with mx-auto Demo

If the Navbar only has a single navbar-nav, then justify-content-center can also be used to center.

EDIT

In the solution above, the Website Name is centered relative to the left and right navbar-nav so if the width of these adjacent navs are different the Website Name is no longer centered.

enter image description here

To resolve this, one of the flexbox workarounds for absolute centering can be used...

Option 1 - Use position:absolute;

Since it's ok to use absolute positioning in flexbox, one option is to use this on the item to be centered.

.abs-center-x {
    position: absolute;
    left: 50%;
    transform: translateX(-50%);
}

Navbar center with absolute position Demo

Option 2 - Use flexbox nesting

Finally, another option is to make the centered item also display:flexbox (using d-flex) and center justified. In this case each navbar component must have flex-grow:1

As of Bootstrap 4 Beta, the Navbar is now display:flex. Bootstrap 4.1.0 includes a new flex-fill class to make each nav section fill the width:

<nav class="navbar navbar-expand-sm navbar-dark bg-dark main-nav">
    <div class="container justify-content-center">
        <ul class="nav navbar-nav flex-fill w-100 flex-nowrap">
            <li class="nav-item active">
                <a class="nav-link" href="#">Home</a>
            </li>
            <li class="nav-item">
                <a class="nav-link" href="#">Download</a>
            </li>
            <li class="nav-item">
                <a class="nav-link" href="#">Register</a>
            </li>
            <li class="nav-item">
                <a class="nav-link" href="#">More</a>
            </li>
        </ul>
        <ul class="nav navbar-nav flex-fill justify-content-center">
            <li class="nav-item"><a class="nav-link" href="#">Center</a></li>
        </ul>
        <ul class="nav navbar-nav flex-fill w-100 justify-content-end">
            <li class="nav-item">
                <a class="nav-link" href="#">Help</a>
            </li>
            <li class="nav-item">
                <a class="nav-link" href="#">Contact</a>
            </li>
        </ul>
    </div>
</nav>

Navbar center with flexbox nesting Demo

Prior to Bootstrap 4.1.0 you can add the flex-fill class like this...

.flex-fill {
   flex:1
}

As of 4.1 flex-fill is included in Bootstrap.

Bootstrap 4 Navbar center demos
More centering demos
Center links on desktop, left align on mobile

Related:
How to center nav-items in Bootstrap?
Bootstrap NavBar with left, center or right aligned items
How move 'nav' element under 'navbar-brand' in my Navbar

enter image description here

Upvotes: 84

sam kh
sam kh

Reputation: 159

Why Not using bootstrap utilities. here is the code

    <nav class="navbar navbar-expand-md bg-light navbar-light fixed-top">
  <!-- Brand -->
  <a class="navbar-brand" href="#"><img src="your-logo"/></a>

  <!-- Toggler/collapsibe Button -->
  <button class="navbar-toggler" type="button" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#collapsibleNavbar">
    <span class="navbar-toggler-icon"></span>
  </button>

  <!-- Navbar links -->
  <div class="collapse navbar-collapse mx-auto justify-content-md-center" id="collapsibleNavbar" >
    <ul class="navbar-nav col-md-auto">
      <li class="nav-item">
        <a class="nav-link" href="#">Link</a>
      </li>
      <li class="nav-item">
        <a class="nav-link" href="#">Link</a>
      </li>
      <li class="nav-item">
        <a class="nav-link" href="#">Link</a>
      </li> 
    </ul>
  </div> 
</nav>

Upvotes: -1

Hezy Ziv
Hezy Ziv

Reputation: 5550

use mx-auto will do the job

<ul class="navbar-nav mx-auto">

Upvotes: 3

cDub
cDub

Reputation: 518

I had a similar problem; the anchor text in my Bootstrap4 navbar wasn't centered. Simply added text-center in the anchor's class.

Upvotes: 1

Victor
Victor

Reputation: 13368

In Bootstrap 4, there is a new utility known as .mx-auto. You just need to specify the width of the centered element.

Ref: http://v4-alpha.getbootstrap.com/utilities/spacing/#horizontal-centering

Diffferent from Bass Jobsen's answer, which is a relative center to the elements on both ends, the following example is absolute centered.

Here's the HTML:

<nav class="navbar bg-faded">
  <div class="container">
    <ul class="nav navbar-nav pull-sm-left">
      <li class="nav-item">
        <a class="nav-link" href="#">Link 1</a>
      </li>
      <li class="nav-item">
        <a class="nav-link" href="#">Link 2</a>
      </li>
      <li class="nav-item">
        <a class="nav-link" href="#">Link 3</a>
      </li>
      <li class="nav-item">
        <a class="nav-link" href="#">Link 4</a>
      </li>
    </ul>
    <ul class="nav navbar-nav navbar-logo mx-auto">
      <li class="nav-item">
        <a class="nav-link" href="#">Brand</a>
      </li>
    </ul>
    <ul class="nav navbar-nav pull-sm-right">
      <li class="nav-item">
        <a class="nav-link" href="#">Link 5</a>
      </li>
      <li class="nav-item">
        <a class="nav-link" href="#">Link 6</a>
      </li>
    </ul>
  </div>
</nav>

And CSS:

.navbar-logo {
  width: 90px;
}

Upvotes: 41

austin
austin

Reputation: 1008

from the docs

Navbars may contain bits of text with the help of .navbar-text. This class adjusts vertical alignment and horizontal spacing for strings of text.

i applied the .navbar-text class to my <li> element, so the result is 

<li class="nav-item navbar-text">

this centers the links vertically with respect to my navbar-brand img

Upvotes: 0

Bass Jobsen
Bass Jobsen

Reputation: 49044

See: https://stackoverflow.com/a/14146967/1596547, now you can use:

<nav class="navbar navbar-light main-nav">
<div class="container text-xs-center">
    <ul class="nav navbar-nav pull-xs-left">
        <li class="nav-item active">
            <a class="nav-link" href="#">Home</a>
        </li>
        <li class="nav-item">
            <a class="nav-link" href="#">Download</a>
        </li>
        <li class="nav-item">
            <a class="nav-link" href="#">Register</a>
        </li>
    </ul>

    <ul class="nav navbar-nav" style="display: inline-block;">
        <li class="nav-item"><a class="nav-link" href="#">Website Name</a></li>
    </ul>

    <ul class="nav navbar-nav pull-xs-right">
        <li class="nav-item">
            <a class="nav-link" href="#">Rates</a>
        </li>
        <li class="nav-item">
            <a class="nav-link" href="#">Help</a>
        </li>
        <li class="nav-item">
            <a class="nav-link" href="#">Contact</a>
        </li>
    </ul>
</div>
</nav>

apply text-xs-center on your container and set display: inline-block; for your list.

Upvotes: 1

Ajay Makwana
Ajay Makwana

Reputation: 2372

make new style

.container {
    position: relative;
}
.center-nav {
    position: absolute;
    left: 0;
    right: 0;
    margin: 0 auto;
    width: auto;
    max-width: 200px;
    text-align: center;
}
.center-nav li{
  text-align: center;
  width:100%;
}

Replace website name UL with below

<ul class="nav navbar-nav center-nav">
        <li class="nav-item"><a class="nav-link" href="#">Website Name</a></li>
 </ul>

Hope this helps..

Upvotes: 0

Priya Rajaram
Priya Rajaram

Reputation: 360

Try this. 

.nav-tabs > li{
    float:none !important;
    display:inline-block !important;
}

.nav-tabs {
    text-align:center !important;
}

Upvotes: 1

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