Home/ Questions/Q 8084763
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-06-05T17:53:39+00:00

My website images look blurry for users with retina displays. (For example, on the

  • 0

My website images look blurry for users with retina displays. (For example, on the Retina MacBook Pro).

How do I serve high-resolution images to visitors with retina displays, but standard-sized images to everyone else, while keeping the image the same apparent size?

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    In your HTML, create a <div> like so:

    <div class="ninjas-image"></div>

    And in your CSS, add:

    .ninjas-image {
  background-image: url('ninja-devices.png');
  width: 410px;
  height: 450px;
}

@media (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 1.5), (min-resolution: 144dpi) {
  .ninjas-image {
    background-image: url('ninja-devices@2x.png');
    background-size: 410px 450px;
  }
}

    The magic here is in the CSS @media query. We have a double-sized image (ninja-devices@2x.png) that we sub-in when the device reports a ‘device pixel ratio’ of 1.5 (144 dpi) or more. Doing it this way allows you to save on bandwidth by delivering the original, smaller image to non-retina devices, and of course it looks great on retina devices.

    Note:

    This answer was updated in 2016 to reflect best-practice. min-device-pixel-ratio did not make it in to the standard. Instead, min-resolution was added to the standard, but desktop and mobile Safari don’t support it at the time of writing, (thus the -webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio fallback). You can check the latest information at: http://caniuse.com/#feat=css-media-resolution.

    • 0