CSS Animation Example: Text Gradient Shift

The "Text Gradient Shift" provides a highly modern, premium feel to large headings and hero sections by continuously panning a colorful gradient inside the letters.

Gradient

There are three core steps to achieving this effect:

Apply an oversized linear-gradient() to the element using background-size: 300% auto. By repeating the starting color at the end of the gradient string, we ensure the loop is seamless.
Make the text color transparent (color: transparent) and use background-clip: text (and its -webkit- prefix) to restrict the background so it only renders where the text characters are drawn. Note that background-clip handles text differently across browsers, hence the prefix.
Set up an @keyframes block to endlessly animate the background-position horizontally across the oversized canvas.

Here is the code to create the Text Gradient Shift animation.

<!doctype html>
<title>Example</title>
<style>
body {
    display: flex;
    justify-content: center;
    align-items: center;
    height: 100vh;
    margin: 0;
    font-family: sans-serif;
    background-color: #222;
}

.gradient-text {
    font-size: 4rem;
    font-weight: 900;
    text-transform: uppercase;
    
    /* 1. Set the gradient background */
    background: linear-gradient(
        to right, 
        #ff00cc, 
        #3333ff, 
        #00ffcc, 
        #ff00cc
    );
    /* Make the background oversized so we can pan it */
    background-size: 300% auto;
    
    /* 2. Clip the background to the text (Webkit specific but widely supported) */
    color: transparent;
    -webkit-background-clip: text;
    background-clip: text;
    
    /* 3. Animate the background position */
    animation: shine 5s linear infinite;
}

@keyframes shine {
    to {
        background-position: 300% center;
    }
}

@media (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce) {
    .gradient-text {
        animation: none; /* Stops the color shift */
        background-position: 0% center; /* Locks it to the first color stop */
    }
}
</style>

<div class="gradient-text">Gradient</div>

View Output

Accessibility Considerations

Rapidly shifting colors, especially high-contrast neon ones, can be a migraine trigger or highly distracting for users with ADHD. prefers-reduced-motion is a CSS media feature used to detect if a user has enabled a setting on their device to minimize the amount of non-essential animation or motion.

We handle this gracefully by removing the animation altogether. The text will still look gorgeous with a static gradient applied to it for users who have enabled prefers-reduced-motion on their device.

Here's what we used in our example:


@media (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce) {
    .gradient-text {
        /* Stops the continuous color shifting */
        animation: none; 
        
        /* Locks the gradient to its starting position */
        background-position: 0% center; 
    }
}