AddThisFeature

Viewport Height Utility

Stop full-height screens from jumping or hiding their controls on mobile browsers.

moderate UI & Polish

What it adds

A single shared height primitive that resolves to the real usable viewport on every device and browser mode.

What your agent is told to do

5
  1. 1

    Find every place the app assumes the viewport is a fixed height — full-bleed heroes, sidebars, drawers, editor shells, scroll containers with a hard height — and route them all through one shared height primitive rather than repeating the same measurement in a dozen components.

  2. 2

    Distinguish the three heights that matter and pick deliberately per surface: the smallest height the viewport takes when browser chrome is fully expanded, the largest when it is retracted, and the height right now. A fixed sidebar wants the small height so its footer is never cut off; a decorative hero can take the large height.

  3. 3

    Always pair the viewport height with a content minimum. A panel that collapses to the height of a short phone in landscape must still be tall enough to show its own controls, and must scroll rather than crush its contents.

  4. 4

    Verify the behaviour in a normal browser tab, in a home-screen installed session with no browser chrome at all, and in landscape, because each resolves the same declaration to a different number and only one of them is usually tested.

  5. 5

    Do not measure the window in script and write a pixel height on resize. That approach fires late, flashes the wrong height on first paint, fights browser chrome that animates in and out during a scroll, and has to be re-run for every orientation and keyboard event.

Edge cases it handles

7
  • Mobile browsers change their visible height as the address bar retracts and expands during a scroll, so a naive full-height value is correct at rest and wrong mid-scroll. Choose the small or large viewport variant explicitly per surface rather than accepting whichever the browser reports at the moment of layout.
  • When the on-screen keyboard opens, the usable area shrinks dramatically and any element sized to the full viewport will push its own footer and primary action underneath the keyboard. Decide per surface whether it tracks the shrunken viewport or holds still, and never let a submit control end up unreachable.
  • A viewport height must never become a content ceiling. If the content is taller than the resolved height — a long form, a translated label that wraps to three lines, a large accessibility text size — the container must scroll instead of clipping, so enforce a minimum height alongside the viewport height.
  • The same declaration resolves differently in a browser tab, in a home-screen standalone session, and inside an in-app webview, because each has a different amount of surrounding chrome. All three need checking, and standalone mode also has to clear the device safe-area insets at the top and bottom.
  • Rotating the device changes both the height and the amount of chrome at once, and some browsers report the old value for a frame or two afterwards. The layout must settle correctly without the user needing to scroll to trigger a reflow.
  • Nested full-height containers compound the error: a panel that is one full viewport tall inside another that is also one full viewport tall produces a page twice the screen height with no visible scroll cue.
  • Height changes must not be animated by default. A container that eases between the small and large viewport height turns ordinary scrolling into a wobbling layout.

Definition of done

8
  • Every full-height surface in the app resolves its height through one shared primitive rather than a locally repeated calculation.
  • Scrolling on a mobile browser does not resize, jump, or reflow full-height layouts as the address bar retracts.
  • No primary action or footer control is pushed out of reach when the on-screen keyboard is open.
  • Full-height containers scroll rather than clip when their content exceeds the resolved height.
  • The layout is correct in a browser tab, in a home-screen standalone session, and after rotating the device.
  • Safe-area insets are respected at the top and bottom in standalone mode.
  • The feature matches the existing design system.
  • No existing functionality is broken.

Related features

How it works

  1. 1

    Copy the link

    Grab the Markdown instruction URL for this feature.

  2. 2

    Give it to your AI

    Paste it into Claude Code, Cursor, v0, Lovable — whatever you build with.

  3. 3

    It inspects, then implements

    Your agent reads your existing app first, then adds the feature to fit it.

Works with your stack

These instructions are written to adapt. They tell the agent to detect your framework, match your existing design system, and reuse what you already have — rather than assuming a particular stack.

Need it tighter than that? Customize the feature and tell it exactly what you're running.