How to remove/ignore :hover css style on touch devices

Question

tl;dr use this: https://jsfiddle.net/57tmy8j3/

If you're interested why or what other options there are, read on.

Quick'n'dirty - remove :hover styles using JS

You can remove all the CSS rules containing :hover using Javascript. This has the advantage of not having to touch CSS and being compatible even with older browsers.

function hasTouch() {
  return 'ontouchstart' in document.documentElement
         || navigator.maxTouchPoints > 0
         || navigator.msMaxTouchPoints > 0;
}

if (hasTouch()) { // remove all the :hover stylesheets
  try { // prevent exception on browsers not supporting DOM styleSheets properly
    for (var si in document.styleSheets) {
      var styleSheet = document.styleSheets[si];
      if (!styleSheet.rules) continue;

      for (var ri = styleSheet.rules.length - 1; ri >= 0; ri--) {
        if (!styleSheet.rules[ri].selectorText) continue;

        if (styleSheet.rules[ri].selectorText.match(':hover')) {
          styleSheet.deleteRule(ri);
        }
      }
    }
  } catch (ex) {}
}

Limitations: stylesheets must be hosted on the same domain (that means no CDNs). Disables hovers on mixed mouse & touch devices like Surface or iPad Pro, which hurts the UX.

CSS-only - use media queries

Place all your :hover rules in a @media block:

@media (hover: hover) {
  a:hover { color: blue; }
}

or alternatively, override all your hover rules (compatible with older browsers):

a:hover { color: blue; }

@media (hover: none) {
  a:hover { color: inherit; }
}

Limitations: works only on iOS 9.0+, Chrome for Android or Android 5.0+ when using WebView. hover: hover breaks hover effects on older browsers, hover: none needs overriding all the previously defined CSS rules. Both are incompatible with mixed mouse & touch devices.

The most robust - detect touch via JS and prepend CSS :hover rules

This method needs prepending all the hover rules with body.hasHover. (or a class name of your choice)

body.hasHover a:hover { color: blue; }

The hasHover class may be added using hasTouch() from the first example:

if (!hasTouch()) document.body.className += ' hasHover'

However, this whould have the same drawbacks with mixed touch devices as previous examples, which brings us to the ultimate solution. Enable hover effects whenever a mouse cursor is moved, disable hover effects whenever a touch is detected.

function watchForHover() {
  // lastTouchTime is used for ignoring emulated mousemove events
  let lastTouchTime = 0

  function enableHover() {
    if (new Date() - lastTouchTime < 500) return
    document.body.classList.add('hasHover')
  }

  function disableHover() {
    document.body.classList.remove('hasHover')
  }

  function updateLastTouchTime() {
    lastTouchTime = new Date()
  }

  document.addEventListener('touchstart', updateLastTouchTime, true)
  document.addEventListener('touchstart', disableHover, true)
  document.addEventListener('mousemove', enableHover, true)

  enableHover()
}

watchForHover()

This should work basically in any browser and enables/disables hover styles as needed.

Here's the full example - modern: https://jsfiddle.net/57tmy8j3/
Legacy (for use with old browsers): https://jsfiddle.net/dkz17jc5/19/

2020 Solution - CSS only - No Javascript

Use media hover with media pointer will help you resolve this issue. Tested on chrome Web and android mobile. I known this old question but I didn't find any solution like this.

@media (hover: hover) and (pointer: fine) {
  a:hover { color: red; }
}

<a href="#" >Some Link</a>

Pointer adaptation to the rescue!

Since this hasn't been touched in awhile, you can use:

a:link, a:visited {
   color: red;
}

a:hover {
   color:blue;
}

@media (hover: none) {
   a:link, a:visited {
      color: red;
   }
}

See this demo in both your desktop browser and your phone browser. Supported by modern touch devices.

Note: Keep in mind that since a Surface PC's primary input (capability) is a mouse, it will end up being a blue link, even if it's a detached (tablet) screen. Browsers will (should) always default to the most precise input's capability.

I have encountered the same problem (in my case with Samsung mobile browsers) and therefore I stumbled upon this question.

Thanks to Calsal's answer I found something that I believe will exclude virtually all desktop browsers because it seems to be recognized by the mobile browsers I tried (see screenshot from a compiled table: CSS pointer feature detection table ).

MDN web docs state that

The pointer CSS @media feature can be used to apply styles based on whether the user's primary input mechanism is a pointing device, and if so, how accurate it is

.

What I discovered is that pointer: coarse is something that is unknown to all desktop browsers in the attached table but known to all mobile browsers in the same table. This seems to be most effective choice because all other pointer keyword values give inconsistent results.

Hence you could construct a media query like Calsal described but slightly modified. It makes use of a reversed logic to rule out all touch devices.

Sass mixin:

@mixin hover-supported {    
    /* 
     * https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/pointer 
     * coarse: The primary input mechanism includes a pointing device of limited accuracy.
     */
    @media not all and (pointer: coarse) {
        &:hover {
            @content;
        }
    }
}

a {
    color:green;
    border-color:blue;

    @include hover-supported() {
        color:blue;
        border-color:green;
    }
}

Compiled CSS:

a {
  color: green;
  border-color: blue;
}
@media not all and (pointer: coarse) {
  a:hover {
    color: blue;
    border-color: green;
  }
}

It is also described in this gist I created after researching the problem. Codepen for empirical research.

UPDATE (2018): As of writing this update, 2018-08-23, and pointed out by @DmitriPavlutin this technique no longer seems to work with Firefox desktop.

UPDATE (2021): It has been pointed out to me that it seems to work as of Firefox 87.

According to Jason´s answer we can address only devices that doesn't support hover with pure css media queries. We can also address only devices that support hover, like moogal´s answer in a similar question, with @media not all and (hover: none). It looks weird but it works.

I made a Sass mixin out of this for easier use:

@mixin hover-supported {
    @media not all and (hover: none) {
        &:hover {
            @content;
        }
    }
}

Update 2019-05-15: I recommend this article from Medium that goes through all different devices that we can target with CSS. Basically it's a mix of these media rules, combine them for specific targets:

@media (hover: hover) {
    /* Device that can hover (desktops) */
}
@media (hover: none) {
    /* Device that can not hover with ease */
}
@media (pointer: coarse) {
    /* Device with limited pointing accuracy (touch) */
}
@media (pointer: fine) {
    /* Device with accurate pointing (desktop, stylus-based) */
}
@media (pointer: none) {
    /* Device with no pointing */
}

Example for specific targets:

@media (hover: none) and (pointer: coarse) {
    /* Smartphones and touchscreens */
}

@media (hover: hover) and (pointer: fine) {
    /* Desktops with mouse */
}

I love mixins, this is how I use my hover mixin to only target devices that supports it:

@mixin on-hover {
    @media (hover: hover) and (pointer: fine) {
        &:hover {
            @content;
        }
    }
}

button {
    @include on-hover {
        color: blue;
    }
}

I'm dealing with a similar problem currently.

There are two main options that occur to me immediately: (1) user-string checking, or (2) maintaining separate mobile pages using a different URL and having users choose what's better for them.

1. If you're able to use an internet duct-tape language such as PHP or Ruby, you can check the user string of the device requesting a page, and simply serve the same content but with a <link rel="mobile.css" /> instead of the normal style.

User strings have identifying information about browser, renderer, operating system, etc. It would be up to you to decide what devices are "touch" versus non-touch. You may be able to find this information available somewhere and map it into your system.

A. If you're allowed to ignore old browsers, you just have to add a single rule to the normal, non-mobile css, namely: EDIT: Erk. After doing some experimentation, I discovered the below rule also disables the ability to follow links in webkit-browsers in addition to just causing aesthetic effects to be disabled - see http://jsfiddle.net/3nkcdeao/
As such, you'll have to be a bit more selective as to how you modify rules for the mobile case than what I show here, but it may be a helpful starting point:

* { 
    pointer-events: none !important; /* only use !important if you have to */
}

As a sidenote, disabling pointer-events on a parent and then explicitly enabling them on a child currently causes any hover-effects on the parent to become active again if a child-element enters :hover.
See http://jsfiddle.net/38Lookhp/5/

B. If you're supporting legacy web-renderers, you'll have to do a bit more work along the lines of removing any rules which set special styles during :hover. To save everyone time, you might just want to build an automated copying + seding command which you run on your standard style sheets to create the mobile versions. That would allow you to just write/update the standard code and scrub away any style-rules which use :hover for the mobile version of your pages.

2. (I) Alternatively, simply make your users aware that you have an m.website.com for mobile devices in addition to your website.com. Though subdomaining is the most common way, you could also have some other predictable modification of a given URL to allow mobile users to access the modified pages. At that stage, you would want to be sure they don't have to modify the URL every time they navigate to another part of the site.

Again here, you may be able to just add an extra rule or two to the stylesheets or be forced to do something slightly more complicated using sed or a similar utility. It would probably be easiest to apply :not to your styling rules like div:not(.disruptive):hover {... wherein you would add class="disruptive" to elements doing annoying things for mobile users using js or the server language, instead of munging the CSS.

2. (II) You can actually combine the first two and (if you suspect a user has wandered to the wrong version of a page) you can suggest that they switch into/out of the mobile-type display, or simply have a link somewhere which allows users to flop back and forth. As already-stated, @media queries might also be something to look use in determining what's being used to visit.

3. (III) If you're up for a jQuery solution once you know what devices are "touch" and which aren't, you might find CSS hover not being ignored on touch-screen devices helpful.