:visited

The :visited CSS pseudo-class applies once the link has been visited by the user. For privacy reasons, the styles that can be modified using this selector are very limited. The :visited pseudo-class applies only to <a> and <area> elements that have an href attribute.

Try it

Styles defined by the :visited and unvisited :link pseudo-classes can be overridden by any subsequent user-action pseudo-classes (:hover or :active) that have at least equal specificity. To style links appropriately, put the :visited rule after the :link rule but before the :hover and :active rules, as defined by the LVHA-order: :link — :visited — :hover — :active. The :visited pseudo-class and :link pseudo-class are mutually exclusive.

Privacy restrictions

For privacy reasons, browsers strictly limit which styles you can apply using this pseudo-class, and how they can be used:

Allowable CSS properties are color, background-color, border-color, border-bottom-color, border-left-color, border-right-color, border-top-color, column-rule-color, outline-color, text-decoration-color, and text-emphasis-color.
Allowable SVG attributes are fill and stroke.
The alpha component of the allowed styles will be ignored. The alpha component of the element's non-:visited state will be used instead. In Firefox when the alpha component is 0, the style set in :visited will be ignored entirely.
Although these styles can change the appearance of colors to the end user, the window.getComputedStyle method will lie and always return the value of the non-:visited color.
The <link> element is never matched by :visited.
DOM methods that match elements via CSS selectors — such as querySelector() and querySelectorAll() — will always return an "empty" result even if there are visited links in a document. For the aforementioned methods, this will be null or an empty NodeList, respectively.

Note: For more information on these limitations and the reasons behind them, see Privacy and the :visited selector.

Syntax

css

:visited {
  /* ... */
}

Examples

Properties that would otherwise have no color or be transparent cannot be modified with :visited. Of the properties that can be set with this pseudo-class, your browser probably has a default value for color and column-rule-color only. Thus, if you want to modify the other properties, you'll need to give them a base value outside the :visited selector.

HTML

html

<a href="#test-visited-link">Have you visited this link yet?</a><br />
<a href="">You've already visited this link.</a>

CSS

css

a {
  /* Specify non-transparent defaults to certain properties,
     allowing them to be styled with the :visited state */
  background-color: white;
  border: 1px solid white;
}

a:visited {
  background-color: yellow;
  border-color: hotpink;
  color: hotpink;
}

Result

Specifications

Specification
HTML Standard # selector-visited
Selectors Level 4 # link

Browser compatibility

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