A Beginner’s Guide to Viewport Meta Tags

A viewport meta tag is HTML (HyperText Markup Language) code that tells browsers how to control viewport dimensions and scaling. It’s a key ingredient of responsive web design and ensures your content is easy to view.

A viewport is the user’s visible area of a webpage. It varies by device and when you resize browser windows.

For example, the default viewport size on a tablet is smaller than on a desktop screen. A smartphone viewport is typically smaller than both.

If a user resizes a desktop browser window, they also manipulate the viewport. The display may stay the same or reformat.

Viewports are rarely the same size as a fully rendered webpage, so browsers use scrollbars to let users access all of a site’s content.

Notice how you don’t just see more or less of the same page on each device. The layout changes, too:

This kind of responsive website design enhances UX (user experience) and can positively impact your SEO efforts.

A viewport meta tag adjusts your content to a user’s screen. It makes a page more responsive and prevents users from having to scroll horizontally or zoom.

Here’s an example of how a viewport tag impacts a basic page:

The text in the display on the left is unreadable. And the display doesn’t make good use of the space available. Users must zoom in on both the photo and the text to view them.

The text on the right is immediately readable (aside from being dummy text) and the image fills the screen’s width. The user can see clearly without making...