`:visited` CSS pseudo-class

The :visited CSS pseudo-class applies once the link has been visited by the user. For privacy reasons, the styles that can be modified using this selector are very limited. The :visited pseudo-class applies only to <a> and <area> elements that have an href attribute.

p {
  font-weight: bold;
}

a:visited {
  color: forestgreen;
  text-decoration-color: hotpink;
}

<p>Pages that you might have visited:</p>
<ul>
  <li>
    <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org">MDN Web Docs</a>
  </li>
  <li>
    <a href="https://www.youtube.com/">YouTube</a>
  </li>
</ul>
<p>Pages unlikely to be in your history:</p>
<ul>
  <li>
    <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/missing-1">Random MDN page</a>
  </li>
  <li>
    <a href="https://example.com/missing-1">Random Example page</a>
  </li>
</ul>

Styles defined by the :visited and unvisited :link pseudo-classes can be overridden by any subsequent user-action pseudo-classes (:hover or :active) that have at least equal specificity. To style links appropriately, put the :visited rule after the :link rule but before the :hover and :active rules, as defined by the LVHA-order: :link — :visited — :hover — :active. The :visited pseudo-class and :link pseudo-class are mutually exclusive.

Privacy restrictions

For privacy reasons, browsers strictly limit which styles you can apply using this pseudo-class, and how they can be used:

• Allowable CSS properties are color, background-color, border-color, border-bottom-color, border-left-color, border-right-color, border-top-color, column-rule-color, outline-color, text-decoration-color, and text-emphasis-color.
• Allowable SVG attributes are fill and stroke.
• The alpha component of the allowed styles will be ignored. The alpha component of the element’s non-:visited state will be used instead. In Firefox when the alpha component is 0, the style set in :visited will be ignored entirely.
• Although these styles can change the appearance of colors to the end user, the getComputedStyle method will lie and always return the value of the non-:visited color.
• The <link> element is never matched by :visited.
• DOM methods that match elements via CSS selectors — such as querySelector() and querySelectorAll() — will always return an “empty” result even if there are visited links in a document. For the aforementioned methods, this will be null or an empty NodeList, respectively.

[!NOTE] For more information on these limitations and the reasons behind them, see Privacy and the :visited selector.

Syntax

:visited {
  /* ... */
}

Examples

Properties that would otherwise have no color or be transparent cannot be modified with :visited. Of the properties that can be set with this pseudo-class, your browser probably has a default value for color and column-rule-color only. Thus, if you want to modify the other properties, you’ll need to give them a base value outside the :visited selector.

HTML

<a href="#test-visited-link">Have you visited this link yet?</a><br />
<a href="">You've already visited this link.</a>

CSS

a {
  /* Specify non-transparent defaults to certain properties,
     allowing them to be styled with the :visited state */
  background-color: white;
  border: 1px solid white;
}

a:visited {
  background-color: yellow;
  border-color: hotpink;
  color: hotpink;
}

Result

Specifications

Browser compatibility

See also

• Privacy and the :visited selector
• Link-related pseudo-classes: :link, :active, :hover