User Preference Media Features Client Hints Headers

This is the repository for a set of HTTP Client Hints headers around user preference media features as defined by Media Queries Level 5. You are welcome to contribute!

Authors:

• Thomas Steiner
• François Beaufort

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• GitHub repository
• Issue tracker

Introduction

CSS media queries, and specifically user preference media features like prefers-color-scheme or prefers-reduced-motion, have a potentially significant impact¹ on the amount of CSS that needs to be delivered by a page, and on the experience the user is going to have when the page loads.

Focusing on prefers-color-scheme—but highlighting that the reasoning in this explainer applies to other user preference media features as well—it is a best practice to not load CSS for the particular non-matching color scheme in the critical rendering path, and instead to initially only load the currently relevant CSS. One way of doing so is via <link media>.

However, high-traffic sites like Google Search that wish to honor user preference media features like prefers-color-scheme and that inline CSS for performance reasons, need to know about the preferred color scheme (or other user preference media features respectively) ideally at request time, so that the initial HTML payload already has the right CSS inlined.

Additionally, and specifically for prefers-color-scheme, sites by all means want to avoid a flash of inaccurate color theme.

Proposed Solution

Client Hints

HTTP Client Hints defines an Accept-CH response header that servers can use to advertise their use of request headers for proactive content negotiation, colloquially referred to as client hints. This proposal is about a set of new client hints aimed at conveying user preference media features. These client hints are named after the corresponding user preference media feature that they report on. For example, the currently preferred color scheme as per prefers-color-scheme is reported via the aptly named Sec-CH-Prefers-Color-Scheme client hint.

Meta note: This is somewhat of the inverse of what was proposed in w3c/csswg-drafts#2370, where the Save-Data client hint was suggested to be exposed through a prefers-reduced-data user preference media feature.

Critical Client Hints

It is the expectation of the author that the proposed client hints will most commonly be used as Critical Client Hints. Critical Client Hints are Client Hints which meaningfully change the resulting resource. Such a resource should be fetched consistently across page loads (including the initial page load) to avoid jarring user-visible switches.

Proposed Syntax

User preference media features consist of a name (like prefers-reduced-motion) and allowed values (like no-preference or reduce. Each client hint header field is represented as Structured Headers for HTTP object containing an item whose value is a string. For example, to convey that the user prefers a dark theme and reduced motion, the client hints look like in the example below.

Sec-CH-Prefers-Color-Scheme: "dark"
Sec-CH-Prefers-Reduced-Motion: "reduce"

The CSS equivalent of the information conveyed in the above client hints is @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {} and @media (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce) {} respectively.

Complete List of the Client Hints

The list of the client hints is modeled after the user preference media features in Media Queries Level 5.

Demo of Sec-CH-Prefers-Color-Scheme

Try the demo in Chrome Canary (≥92.0.4514.0) and notice how the inlined CSS changes according to the user's preferred color scheme.

Example

1. The client makes an initial request to the server.

   GET / HTTP/1.1
   Host: example.com

2. The server responds, telling the client via Accept-CH that it accepts the Sec-CH-Prefers-Color-Scheme and the Sec-CH-Prefers-Contrast Client Hints, out of which as per Critical-CH it considers Sec-CH-Prefers-Color-Scheme a Critical Client Hint that it also varies the response on as conveyed by Vary.

   HTTP/1.1 200 OK
   Content-Type: text/html
   Accept-CH: Sec-CH-Prefers-Color-Scheme, Sec-CH-Prefers-Contrast
   Vary: Sec-CH-Prefers-Color-Scheme
   Critical-CH: Sec-CH-Prefers-Color-Scheme

3. The client then retries the request, telling the server via Sec-CH-Prefers-Color-Scheme that it has a user preference for dark-schemed content.

   GET / HTTP/1.1
   Host: example.com
   Sec-CH-Prefers-Color-Scheme: "dark"

4. The server can then tailor the response to the client's preferences accordingly and, for example, inline the CSS responsible for the dark theme into the response body.

Privacy and Security Considerations

The Security Considerations of HTTP Client Hints and the Security Considerations of Client Hint Reliability likewise apply to this proposal.

References

• Client Hints
• Client Hint Reliability
• Media Queries Level 5
• Structured Headers for HTTP
• Save-Data Client Hint

Acknowledgements

Many thanks for valuable feedback and advice from:

• Yoav Weiss
• The W3C TAG reviewers (w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/632)

Footnotes

1. "Implementing Dark Mode took over 1,000 lines of CSS"—https://webkit.org/blog/8892/dark-mode-in-web-inspector/