---
title: useMedia
description: Respond to different screen sizes
---

Define your media rules in the media object of your `tamagui.config.ts`:

```tsx line=2-6
export default createTamagui({
  media: {
    xs: { maxWidth: 660 },
    gtXs: { minWidth: 660 + 1 },
    sm: { maxWidth: 860 },
    gtSm: { minWidth: 860 + 1 },
    md: { maxWidth: 980 },
    gtMd: { minWidth: 980 + 1 },
    lg: { maxWidth: 1120 },
    gtLg: { minWidth: 1120 + 1 },
    short: { maxHeight: 820 },
    tall: { minHeight: 820 },
    hoverNone: { hover: 'none' },
    touch: { pointer: 'coarse' },
  },
})
```

<Notice theme="blue">
  Choose the naming convention you prefer. We use `sm`, `md`, `lg` and `gtSm` etc. Where
  "gt" means "greater than".
</Notice>

The order here is important: items defined further down will override items before. In this example, `xs` is the weakest, `gtXs` will override it, and so on.

Behind the scenes, we convert this object syntax into media query syntax with a simple loop over your object, turning camelCase into hyphen-case, and adding `@media()` around it.

### Usage

Now in any component you may import and use `useMedia` or `$` prefixed media prop styles.

### Inline props

```tsx
import { Button, XStack, useMedia } from 'tamagui' // note: design system can use @tamagui/core

export default () => {
  const [x, setX] = useState(0)
  return (
    <XStack
      backgroundColor="red"
      $gtSm={{
        backgroundColor: 'blue',
      }}
      $gtMd={{
        backgroundColor: x > 0.5 ? 'green' : 'yellow',
      }}
    >
      <Button onPress={() => setX(Math.random())}>Hello</Button>
    </XStack>
  )
}
```

In this example we are doing mobile-first design, where the base props will be overridden as the viewport gets wider. Notice the ternary logic in `$gtMd`: this is extractable with Tamagui, and will still output simple CSS with no leftover style props in your component's render function.

### Hooks

```tsx
import { Button, XStack, useMedia } from 'tamagui' // note: design system can use @tamagui/core

export default () => {
  const media = useMedia()

  return (
    <XStack
      // can be used as a ternary
      backgroundColor={media.sm ? 'red' : 'blue'}
      // can be used as a spread
      {...(media.lg && {
        x: 10,
        y: 10,
      })}
    >
      <Button>Hello</Button>
    </XStack>
  )
}
```

As long as **all** of your usages of useMedia are extractable, Tamagui will actually generate your CSS and then fully remove the hook from the output code. You can check this by adding `// debug` to the top of your component.

Of course, you may sometimes use `useMedia` for other purposes than styling. In fact, that's the nice part about Tamagui - if it can't extract, it always falls back to runtime gracefully.

Tamagui runtime `useMedia` usage will track which keys are accessed, and only update if the media query matching that key updates. This granular updating is nice for performance.

#### Limitations

The `useMedia` hook uses proxies so it can track which keys you are accessing and only re-render components that need re-rendering based on those keys. The Tamagui compiler also understands straightforward uses of the hook during compile-time and can remove it entirely when targeting the web, in favor of CSS.

- In order to keep things lightweight and simple, the proxied object returned by `useMedia` is not iterable, and you can't check keys on it using `in` or get them using `Object.keys`.
- It's encouraged to write `const media = useMedia()` and then access your keys like `media.sm` to work best with the compiler. The compiler supports de-structuring, but not re-naming.