explaingit

animate-css/animate.css

82,541CSSAudience · vibe coderComplexity · 1/5StaleLicenseSetup · easy

TLDR

A library of ready-made CSS animations you can add to web pages by dropping in a stylesheet and applying class names to elements.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((animate.css))
    What it does
      Ready-made animations
      Drop-in stylesheet
      Class-based triggers
    Animation types
      Fades
      Bounces
      Wobbles
      Entrances
    Key features
      Cross-browser support
      Respects reduce-motion
      camelCase naming
    Use cases
      Logo animations
      Button effects
      Notifications
      Visual polish

Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Add a bouncing entrance animation to a logo or hero image without writing CSS keyframes.

USE CASE 2

Make a notification fade out smoothly when dismissed by toggling a class name.

USE CASE 3

Create a wobbling button effect on hover to draw attention to a call-to-action.

USE CASE 4

Build accessible animations that automatically disable for users with motion sensitivity settings enabled.

Tech stack

CSSnpmyarn

Getting it running

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 5min
Use freely for any purpose, including commercial use, as long as you comply with the Hippocratic License terms regarding ethical use.

In plain English

Animate.css is a small library of ready-made animations written in pure CSS. CSS is the language web pages use to control how things look; an animation in CSS is a rule that tells the browser to gradually change a property over time, for example to fade an element in or make it bounce. The library bundles many of those animations and gives each one a simple class name, so you can drop the stylesheet into your site and trigger an effect by adding a class to an element. The README's tagline calls it just-add-water CSS animation. It is a cross-browser library, meaning the animations are written so they look the same across the major web browsers. Animation classes are organized by category, such as fades and bounces, and named in camelCase. Crucially, the library respects the prefers-reduced-motion media query: when a visitor has turned on the reduce-motion setting in their operating system because they are sensitive to movement, supported browsers will turn off the transitions automatically with no extra work from the developer. Installation is via the npm or yarn package managers, and full documentation lives on the project's website animate.style. You would use Animate.css when you want to add visual flair to a website, a logo that bounces in, a notification that fades out, a button that wobbles on hover, without writing the underlying animation rules yourself. It is licensed under the Hippocratic License. The project lists Daniel Eden as the creator and a small core team of maintainers.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
Show me how to use animate.css to make a button bounce when clicked. Include the HTML and the class I need to add.
Prompt 2
I want to fade in a list of items one by one using animate.css. What's the simplest way to do this?
Prompt 3
How do I install animate.css via npm and add a fade-out animation to a modal when it closes?
Prompt 4
What animations does animate.css provide for entrance effects, and how do I apply them to multiple elements?
Prompt 5
Explain how animate.css respects the prefers-reduced-motion setting and why that matters for accessibility.
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Generated 2026-05-18 · Model: sonnet-4-6 · Verify against the repo before relying on details.