<portal>: The Portal element

The HTML Portal element (<portal>) enables the embedding of another HTML page into the current one for the purposes of allowing smoother navigation into new pages.

A <portal> is similar to an <iframe>. An <iframe> allows a separate browsing context to be embedded. However, the embedded content of a <portal> is more limited than that of an <iframe>. It cannot be interacted with, and therefore is not suitable for embedding widgets into a document. Instead, the <portal> acts as a preview of the content of another page. It can be navigated into therefore allowing for seamless transition to the embedded content.

Implicit ARIA role button
DOM interface HTMLPortalElement


This element includes the global attributes.

Sets the referrer policy to use when requesting the page at the URL given as the value of the src attribute.
The URL of the page to embed.


Basic example

The following example will embed the contents of https://example.com as a preview.

<portal id="exampleportal" src="https://example.com/"></portal>

Accessibility concerns

The preview displayed by a <portal> is not interactive, therefore does not receive input events or focus. Therefore the embedded contents of the portal are not exposed as elements in the accessibility tree. The portal can be navigated to and activated like a button, the default behavior when clicking on the portal is to activate it.

Portals are given a default label which is the title of the embedded page. If no title is present the visible text in the preview is concatenated to create a label. The aria-label attribute can be used to override this.

Portals used for prerendering only should be hidden with the hidden HTML attribute or the CSS display property with a value of none.

When using animations during portal activation the prefers-reduced-motion media feature should be respected.


Specification Status Comment
Portals Editor's Draft Initial definition.

Browser compatibility

No compatibility data found for html.elements.portal.