Split Text Web Component

Lightweight text-reveal web component. Splits text into words, characters, or detected lines, then animates each unit with a CSS-driven stagger. Eight built-in effects — rise, drop, slide, bloom, two 3D spins, and a per-character magnetic scatter. No dependencies. No framework. ~2.7 KB gzipped (JS) + 0.9 KB (CSS).

A small alternative to GSAP SplitText / Splitting.js when you don't need the rest of those libraries.

Live Demo

Features

• Three split modes: words, chars, lines (auto-detected from layout)
• Eight effects: rise (default), drop, slide-right, slide-left, bloom, spin-x, spin-y, magnetic
• CSS-only animation — transform, opacity, and filter, GPU-accelerated
• Triggers when scrolled into view by default (configurable: load, manual)
• Preserves inline markup (<em>, <strong>, <a>, <br>) inside the host
• Emoji-safe character splitting via Intl.Segmenter
• Honors prefers-reduced-motion
• After animation, wrappers swap to display: contents so text reflows naturally on resize
• Self-registers; safe to import multiple times

Installation

npm install @magic-spells/split-text

import '@magic-spells/split-text';

Or include directly:

<script src="https://unpkg.com/@magic-spells/split-text"></script>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://unpkg.com/@magic-spells/split-text/css/min" />

Usage

<split-text>The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.</split-text>

That's it. The element splits on words by default and animates as soon as it scrolls into view.

Modes

<!-- Words (default) -->
<split-text split="words">Each word slides up independently</split-text>

<!-- Characters -->
<split-text split="chars">Letter by letter</split-text>

<!-- Lines (auto-detected from layout) -->
<split-text split="lines">
  This longer paragraph wraps onto multiple lines, and each line
  animates as a unit. Resize the window before scrolling to it and
  the line groups recalculate to match the new layout.
</split-text>

Effects

<!-- rise (default) — slides up from below -->
<split-text>Rises into view.</split-text>

<!-- drop — falls in from above -->
<split-text effect="drop">Falls into place.</split-text>

<!-- slide-right / slide-left — sweeps in horizontally -->
<split-text effect="slide-right" split="chars">Sliding in from the right.</split-text>
<split-text effect="slide-left" split="chars">And from the left.</split-text>

<!-- bloom — blur + scale pop, no translate -->
<split-text effect="bloom" split="chars">Comes into focus.</split-text>

<!-- spin-x — rotateX flip (origin: bottom by default) -->
<split-text effect="spin-x" split="chars">Stands up from baseline.</split-text>

<!-- spin-y — rotateY flip (origin: left by default) -->
<split-text effect="spin-y" split="chars">Swings open like a door.</split-text>

<!-- magnetic — per-character random scatter, snaps into place -->
<split-text effect="magnetic" split="chars">Pulled into place.</split-text>

The 3D spin effects rely on perspective: 2000px set on the host by default. Override with --split-text-perspective, and shift the pivot with --split-text-origin. The bloom effect's starting state is tunable via --split-text-blur and --split-text-scale.

The magnetic effect is built for split="chars". Each character starts shifted to the right by a random distance at a random height, blurred and transparent, then accelerates home on an ease-in curve (override with easing). The per-unit offsets are randomized in JS — replaying via .split() reshuffles them. Pieces are intentionally not clipped, so they travel outside their box; the starting blur is shared with bloom via --split-text-blur.

Timing

<split-text delay="200" stagger="50" duration="900">
  Wait 200ms, then 50ms between each word, 900ms per word.
</split-text>

Triggers

<!-- Default: animate when scrolled into view (waits until 100% visible) -->
<split-text trigger="visible">…</split-text>

<!-- Animate immediately on load -->
<split-text trigger="load">…</split-text>

<!-- Manual trigger -->
<split-text id="hero" trigger="manual">…</split-text>
<script>
  document.querySelector('#hero').reveal();
</script>

Adjusting the trigger position

offset shifts the trigger line up from the bottom of the viewport. The default is "20%" — text animates once the element has scrolled into the bottom fifth of the viewport, rather than the instant it peeks in.

<!-- Default — 20% of viewport height above the bottom -->
<split-text>…</split-text>

<!-- Custom: 200px above the bottom of the viewport -->
<split-text offset="200px">…</split-text>

<!-- Disable the offset — fire on first intersection -->
<split-text offset="0">…</split-text>

Custom Easing

<split-text easing="cubic-bezier(0.34, 1.56, 0.64, 1)">
  A spring overshoot for that playful feel.
</split-text>

Inline Markup

Inline tags inside the host are preserved. Links remain clickable, emphasis still styles, line breaks force new lines:

<split-text split="lines">
  Built with <em>care</em> and <a href="/about">a few good ideas</a>.<br>
  Try resizing the window before scrolling here.
</split-text>

Attributes

Attribute	Default	Description
split	words	words, chars, or lines
effect	rise	rise, drop, slide-right, slide-left, bloom, spin-x, spin-y, magnetic
delay	0	Initial delay before animation starts (ms)
stagger	30	Delay between each unit (ms)
duration	800	Animation duration per unit (ms)
easing	cubic-bezier(0.16, 1, 0.3, 1)	CSS easing function
trigger	visible	visible, load, or manual
offset	20%	Distance above bottom of viewport before firing (px or %; set 0 to disable)

CSS Custom Properties

Override these for theming. They're already wired through the CSS — set them on the host or any ancestor.

Property	Default	Description
--split-text-duration	800ms	Animation duration
--split-text-easing	cubic-bezier(0.16, 1, 0.3, 1)	Animation easing
--split-text-distance	100%	Travel distance for rise / drop / slide-* (try 40% for subtler)
--split-text-stagger	30ms	Delay between units
--split-text-delay	0ms	Initial delay
--split-text-perspective	2000px	3D camera distance — applies to spin-x / spin-y
--split-text-origin	per-effect	transform-origin for spin (defaults: bottom for spin-x, left for spin-y)
--split-text-blur	2px	Starting blur radius (bloom & magnetic)
--split-text-scale	0.7	Bloom starting scale

split-text {
  --split-text-easing: ease-out;
  --split-text-distance: 60%;
}

Methods

const el = document.querySelector('split-text');

el.reveal();  // trigger animation manually (when trigger="manual")
el.split();   // reset and re-split (call after changing innerHTML)

Events

Both events bubble.

el.addEventListener('split-text:start', (e) => {
  console.log(e.detail); // { split: "words", count: 12 }
});

el.addEventListener('split-text:complete', (e) => {
  console.log('done', e.detail);
});

How it works

The script walks the host's text nodes, wraps each word (or grapheme, in chars mode) in two nested spans — an outer mask with overflow: hidden and an inner element that animates from a pre-reveal state to its final position. Each inner span gets a --i index; CSS computes animation-delay from it. The effect attribute selects which keyframe runs — duration, easing, and stagger are shared across every effect. (The magnetic effect is the one exception to the overflow: hidden mask: its pieces fly in from outside the box, so the wrapper is set to overflow: visible, and JS stamps each inner span with a random --split-text-mx / --split-text-my start offset.)

For lines mode, the script splits into words first, measures each word's getBoundingClientRect().top after layout, groups consecutive words by their top position (with tolerance for sub-pixel rendering), and assigns every word in a line the same --i. Words are never re-parented, so any inline markup inside (links, emphasis, etc.) survives the split.

Once animation completes, the host gets data-revealed and CSS sets every internal wrapper to display: contents. Layout becomes identical to the original markup — text reflows naturally on resize, with no JS work and no innerHTML thrash.

Accessibility

• The host's aria-label is set to the original plain text, so screen readers announce the sentence once instead of wrapper-by-wrapper.
• Generated word wrappers are marked aria-hidden="true" to prevent the AT from re-reading the same text the aria-label already covers.
• Per the ARIA spec, aria-hidden is skipped on wrappers inside interactive ancestors (<a>, <button>, <summary>, form controls, [role="button"], focusable [tabindex], etc.). Nested links and buttons retain their accessible names.
• prefers-reduced-motion: reduce disables the animation entirely; content shows immediately.

Browser Support

Modern browsers with custom elements + IntersectionObserver support (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge). Intl.Segmenter is used when available for grapheme-correct character splitting; older Safari falls back to spread iterator (handles emoji correctly, just not full grapheme clusters).

License

MIT

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Made by Cory Schulz