Bootstrap: align input with button

Question

Why don't buttons and inputs align well in Bootstrap?

I tried something simple like:

<input type="text"/><button class="btn">button</button> 

The button is about 5px lower than the input in chrome/firefox.

Answer 1

Twitter Bootstrap 4

In Twitter Bootstrap 4, inputs and buttons can be aligned using the input-group-prepend and input-group-append classes (see https://getbootstrap.com/docs/4.0/components/input-group/#button-addons)

Group button on the left side (prepend)

<div class="input-group mb-3">   <div class="input-group-prepend">     <button class="btn btn-outline-secondary" type="button">Button</button>   </div>   <input type="text" class="form-control"> </div> 

Group button on the right side (append)

<div class="input-group mb-3">   <input type="text" class="form-control">   <div class="input-group-append">     <button class="btn btn-outline-secondary" type="button">Button</button>   </div> </div> 

Twitter Bootstrap 3

As shown in the answer by @abimelex, inputs and buttons can be aligned by using the .input-group classes (see http://getbootstrap.com/components/#input-groups-buttons)

Group button on the left side

<div class="input-group">   <span class="input-group-btn">     <button class="btn btn-default" type="button">Go!</button>   </span>   <input type="text" class="form-control"> </div> 

Group button on the right side

<div class="input-group">    <input type="text" class="form-control">    <span class="input-group-btn">         <button class="btn btn-default" type="button">Go!</button>    </span> </div> 

This solution has been added to keep my answer up to date, but please stick your up-vote on the answer provided by @abimelex.

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Twitter Bootstrap 2

Bootstrap offers an .input-append class, which works as a wrapper element and corrects this for you:

<div class="input-append">     <input name="search" id="search"/>     <button class="btn">button</button> </div> 

As pointed out by @OleksiyKhilkevich in his answer, there is a second way to align input and button by using the .form-horizontal class:

<div class="form-horizontal">     <input name="search" id="search"/>     <button class="btn">button</button> </div> 

The Differences

The difference between these two classes is that .input-append will place the button up against the input element (so they look like they are attached), where .form-horizontal will place a space between them.

-- Note --

To allow the input and button elements to be next to each other without spacing, the font-size has been set to 0 in the .input-append class (this removes the white spacing between the inline-block elements). This may have an adverse effect on font-sizes in the input element if you want to override the defaults using em or % measurements.

Answer 2

Bootstrap 5

<div class="input-group">   <input type="text" class="form-control">   <button class="btn btn-outline-secondary" type="button">Go</button> </div> 

Bootstrap 3 & 4

you may use the input-group button property to apply the button direct to the input-field.

<div class="input-group">   <input type="text" class="form-control">   <span class="input-group-btn">     <button class="btn btn-default" type="button">Go!</button>   </span> </div><!-- /input-group --> 

Take a look at BS4 or BS5 Input-Group doc for many more examples.