Bootstrap 5 Spinners

Spinners

Indicate the loading state of a component or page with Bootstrap spinners, built entirely with HTML, CSS, and no JavaScript.

🤖 Looking for the LLM-optimized version? View llm.md

Other frameworks

CoreUI components are available as native Angular, React, and Vue components. To learn more please visit the following pages.

On this page

About

Bootstrap “spinners” can be used to show the loading state in your projects. They’re built only with HTML and CSS, meaning you don’t need any JavaScript to create them. You will, however, need some custom JavaScript to toggle their visibility. Their appearance, alignment, and sizing can be easily customized with our amazing utility classes.

For accessibility purposes, each loader here includes role="status" and a nested <span class="visually-hidden">Loading...</span>.

This component's animation effect relies on the prefers-reduced-motion media query. For more information, refer to the reduced motion section of our accessibility documentation.

Border spinner

Use the border spinners for a lightweight loading indicator.

html

<div class="spinner-border" role="status">
  <span class="visually-hidden">Loading...</span>
</div>

Colors

The border spinner uses currentColor for its border-color, meaning you can customize the color with text color utilities. You can use any of our text color utilities on the standard spinner.

html

<div class="spinner-border text-primary" role="status">
  <span class="visually-hidden">Loading...</span>
</div>
<div class="spinner-border text-secondary" role="status">
  <span class="visually-hidden">Loading...</span>
</div>
<div class="spinner-border text-success" role="status">
  <span class="visually-hidden">Loading...</span>
</div>
<div class="spinner-border text-danger" role="status">
  <span class="visually-hidden">Loading...</span>
</div>
<div class="spinner-border text-warning" role="status">
  <span class="visually-hidden">Loading...</span>
</div>
<div class="spinner-border text-info" role="status">
  <span class="visually-hidden">Loading...</span>
</div>
<div class="spinner-border text-light" role="status">
  <span class="visually-hidden">Loading...</span>
</div>
<div class="spinner-border text-dark" role="status">
  <span class="visually-hidden">Loading...</span>
</div>

Why not use border-color utilities? Each border spinner specifies a transparent border for at least one side, so .border-{color} utilities would override that.

Growing spinner

If you don’t fancy a border spinner, switch to the grow spinner. While it doesn’t technically spin, it does repeatedly grow!

html

<div class="spinner-grow" role="status">
  <span class="visually-hidden">Loading...</span>
</div>

Once again, this spinner is built with currentColor, so you can easily change its appearance with text color utilities. Here it is in blue, along with the supported variants.

html

<div class="spinner-grow text-primary" role="status">
  <span class="visually-hidden">Loading...</span>
</div>
<div class="spinner-grow text-secondary" role="status">
  <span class="visually-hidden">Loading...</span>
</div>
<div class="spinner-grow text-success" role="status">
  <span class="visually-hidden">Loading...</span>
</div>
<div class="spinner-grow text-danger" role="status">
  <span class="visually-hidden">Loading...</span>
</div>
<div class="spinner-grow text-warning" role="status">
  <span class="visually-hidden">Loading...</span>
</div>
<div class="spinner-grow text-info" role="status">
  <span class="visually-hidden">Loading...</span>
</div>
<div class="spinner-grow text-light" role="status">
  <span class="visually-hidden">Loading...</span>
</div>
<div class="spinner-grow text-dark" role="status">
  <span class="visually-hidden">Loading...</span>
</div>

Alignment

Spinners in Bootstrap are built with rems, currentColor, and display: inline-flex. This means they can easily be resized, recolored, and quickly aligned.

Margin

Use margin utilities like .m-5 for easy spacing.

html

<div class="spinner-border m-5" role="status">
  <span class="visually-hidden">Loading...</span>
</div>

Placement

Use flexbox utilities, float utilities, or text alignment utilities to place spinners exactly where you need them in any situation.

Flex

html

<div class="d-flex justify-content-center">
  <div class="spinner-border" role="status">
    <span class="visually-hidden">Loading...</span>
  </div>
</div>

Loading...

html

<div class="d-flex align-items-center">
  <strong role="status">Loading...</strong>
  <div class="spinner-border ms-auto" aria-hidden="true"></div>
</div>

Floats

html

<div class="clearfix">
  <div class="spinner-border float-end" role="status">
    <span class="visually-hidden">Loading...</span>
  </div>
</div>

Text align

html

<div class="text-center">
  <div class="spinner-border" role="status">
    <span class="visually-hidden">Loading...</span>
  </div>
</div>

Size

Add .spinner-border-sm and .spinner-grow-sm to make a smaller spinner that can quickly be used within other components.

html

<div class="spinner-border spinner-border-sm" role="status">
  <span class="visually-hidden">Loading...</span>
</div>
<div class="spinner-grow spinner-grow-sm" role="status">
  <span class="visually-hidden">Loading...</span>
</div>

Or, use custom CSS or inline styles to change the dimensions as needed.

html

<div class="spinner-border" style="width: 3rem; height: 3rem;" role="status">
  <span class="visually-hidden">Loading...</span>
</div>
<div class="spinner-grow" style="width: 3rem; height: 3rem;" role="status">
  <span class="visually-hidden">Loading...</span>
</div>

Buttons

Use spinners within buttons to indicate an action is currently processing or taking place. You may also swap the text out of the spinner element and utilize button text as needed.

html

<button class="btn btn-primary" type="button" disabled>
  <span class="spinner-border spinner-border-sm" aria-hidden="true"></span>
  <span class="visually-hidden" role="status">Loading...</span>
</button>
<button class="btn btn-primary" type="button" disabled>
  <span class="spinner-border spinner-border-sm" aria-hidden="true"></span>
  <span role="status">Loading...</span>
</button>

html

<button class="btn btn-primary" type="button" disabled>
  <span class="spinner-grow spinner-grow-sm" aria-hidden="true"></span>
  <span class="visually-hidden" role="status">Loading...</span>
</button>
<button class="btn btn-primary" type="button" disabled>
  <span class="spinner-grow spinner-grow-sm" aria-hidden="true"></span>
  <span role="status">Loading...</span>
</button>

Customizing

CSS variables

Spinners use local CSS variables on .spinner-border and .spinner-grow for enhanced real-time customization. Values for the CSS variables are set via Sass, so Sass customization is still supported, too.

Border spinner variables:

scss/_spinners.scss

--cui-spinner-width: #{$spinner-width};
--cui-spinner-height: #{$spinner-height};
--cui-spinner-vertical-align: #{$spinner-vertical-align};
--cui-spinner-border-width: #{$spinner-border-width};
--cui-spinner-animation-speed: #{$spinner-animation-speed};
--cui-spinner-animation-name: spinner-border;

Growing spinner variables:

scss/_spinners.scss

--cui-spinner-width: #{$spinner-width};
--cui-spinner-height: #{$spinner-height};
--cui-spinner-vertical-align: #{$spinner-vertical-align};
--cui-spinner-animation-speed: #{$spinner-animation-speed};
--cui-spinner-animation-name: spinner-grow;

For both spinners, small spinner modifier classes are used to update the values of these CSS variables as needed. For example, the .spinner-border-sm class does the following:

scss/_spinners.scss

--cui-spinner-width: #{$spinner-width-sm};
--cui-spinner-height: #{$spinner-height-sm};
--cui-spinner-border-width: #{$spinner-border-width-sm};

SASS variables

scss/_variables.scss

$spinner-width:           2rem;
$spinner-height:          $spinner-width;
$spinner-vertical-align:  -.125em;
$spinner-border-width:    .25em;
$spinner-animation-speed: .75s;

$spinner-width-sm:        1rem;
$spinner-height-sm:       $spinner-width-sm;
$spinner-border-width-sm: .2em;

Keyframes

Used for creating the CSS animations for our spinners. Included in scss/_spinners.scss.

scss/_spinners.scss

@keyframes spinner-border {
  to { transform: rotate(360deg) #{"/* rtl:ignore */"}; }
}

scss/_spinners.scss

@keyframes spinner-grow {
  0% {
    transform: scale(0);
  }
  50% {
    opacity: 1;
    transform: none;
  }
}

CoreUI vs Bootstrap

While this Spinner component is fully compatible with Bootstrap and follows its core principles, CoreUI delivers a more complete solution for modern app development.

What sets CoreUI apart from Bootstrap?

✅ Fully compatible with Bootstrap – Built directly on Bootstrap, all classes and behaviors work as expected.
🧠 Framework-native versions – CoreUI provides dedicated libraries for React.js, Vue.js, and Angular, unlike Bootstrap which relies on third-party plugins for JavaScript frameworks.
👨‍💻 Maintained by a full-time team – CoreUI is developed as a professional product, not a volunteer-driven project.
📦 More built-in components – Includes additional ready-to-use components like range sliders, multi-selects, steppers, etc.
🛠️ Sass Modules support today – CoreUI already supports Sass Modules, which are planned for Bootstrap 6.
🌍 Better LTR/RTL support – Uses modern CSS logical properties for seamless bidirectional layout support.
🔒 LTS (Long-Term Support) – Bootstrap now offers LTS only via paid third parties like HeroDevs, while CoreUI continues to offer long-term support natively and for free.

Whether you’re building internal tools, dasards, or SaaS platforms — CoreUI combines the familiarity of Bootstrap with a more powerful, scalable, and production-ready ecosystem.

👉 Explore CoreUI Bootstrap Components
👉 Compare CoreUI vs Bootstrap