Lightning CSS is an extremely fast CSS parser, transformer, and minifier written in Rust. It is useful for parsing and transforming CSS, performing safe CSS minification, vendor prefixing, and syntax lowering, and it can be used with Parcel, as a standalone library or CLI, or via a plugin for other tools.
Project status
- Actively maintained, with a very recent upstream push (2026-06-06) and multiple recent tagged updates (v1.32.0, v1.31.0, v1.30.2).
- Apparent update cadence is steady, roughly every 1 to 3 months (v1.30.2 on 2025-09-29, v1.31.0 on 2026-01-20, v1.32.0 on 2026-03-09).
AI summary generated Today
Recent updates
v1.32.0
3 months agov1.32.0 adds support for custom resolvers returning an external marker to keep certain @import rules unbundled, and it lets visitor callbacks report dependencies via an addDependency hook. It also adds mix-blend-mode support and includes several output-format and parsing fixes (color-scheme handling, rotate serialization, whitespace, var/env punctuation, and scale percentage handling).
Featuresv1.31.0
4 months agov1.31.0 adds support for scroll-state container queries, :state() pseudo-class, print-color-adjust, and additional @property and container query syntax improvements. It also improves various minification and parsing edge cases (grid shorthand, background-position handling, whitespace preservation, and nested declaration semicolons). The release notes describe the user-facing CSS feature additions, but the code changes include several AST and error-handling shape changes that may break Rust consumers.
BreakingFeaturesv1.30.2
8 months agov1.30.2 is primarily an internal dependency and serialization migration release, updating browser compatibility data and improving Android build/install behavior. The Rust side switches away from deprecated or private serde internals by adopting serde-content, and it bumps browserslist-rs and replaces the paste macro dependency. Several functional code paths also change around pseudo-element handling (grammar-error, spelling-error) and browser compatibility feature gating.
Featuresv1.30.1
5/14/2025v1.30.1 is a targeted patch release intended to fix a crash occurring when lightningcss is loaded inside a Node.js worker thread on Linux. The release notes only mention the crash fix, but the code diff shows a build-time linker behavior change as the likely root cause mitigation.
v1.30.0
5/11/2025v1.30.0 updates Lightning CSS to track newer CSS specs, most notably relative color parsing changes and improved nesting support for modern CSS nesting rules. It also adds support for additional pseudo elements like ::picker variants, improves media query error recovery, and includes a number of targeted fixes around gradients, CSS modules composes handling, and output correctness.
BreakingFeaturesv1.29.3
3/14/2025v1.29.3 adds support for the CSS pseudo-elements ::details-content and ::target-text, and updates placeholder selector handling across browsers. It also recognizes the special CSS Modules directive comment /* cssmodules-pure-no-check */ and updates browser compatibility data used for compatibility/prefix decisions.
Featuresv1.29.2
3/6/2025v1.29.2 includes dependency updates (detect-libc, browserslist-rs) and targeted fixes for container query parsing and CSS minification. The code diff also shows additional behavior changes, especially around AST typing for container style queries and the implementation of list-style shorthand parsing/serialization.
v1.29.0
1/9/2025v1.29.0 adds CSS View Transitions Level 2 support, including the @view-transition at-rule, new related properties, and expanded selector scoping/minification behavior. It also adds parsing support for @font-feature-values, and includes several media query and parsing/minification fixes.
Featuresv1.28.2
11/25/2024v1.28.2 contains a set of targeted fixes around transition-property handling, browser compatibility data, source map mappings, and deterministic ordering of custom properties. The code changes also include broader internal behavior adjustments to prefix gating and transition shorthand processing that are not fully described in the release notes.
v1.28.0
11/3/2024LightningCSS v1.28.0 adds a CSS Modules option to control hashing of `@container` names, improves certain parser error messages, and introduces an error for deprecated CSS Modules `@value`. The release also includes a variety of fixes around calc evaluation/parsing, `color-mix` behavior with system colors, and updated browser compatibility data.
BreakingFeatures