The <menu> HTML element is described in the HTML specification as a semantic alternative to <ul>, but treated by browsers (and exposed through the accessibility tree) as no different than <ul>. It represents an unordered list of items (which are represented by <li> elements).

This element only includes the global attributes.

The <menu> and <ul> elements both represent an unordered list of items. The key difference is that <ul> primarily contains items for display, while <menu> was intended for interactive items. The related <menuitem> element has been deprecated.

In this example, a <menu> is used to create a toolbar for an editing application.

HTML

<menu>
  <li><button onclick="copy()">Copy</button></li>
  <li><button onclick="cut()">Cut</button></li>
  <li><button onclick="paste()">Paste</button></li>
</menu>

Note that this is functionally no different than:

<ul>
  <li><button onclick="copy()">Copy</button></li>
  <li><button onclick="cut()">Cut</button></li>
  <li><button onclick="paste()">Paste</button></li>
</ul>

CSS

menu, ul {
  display: flex;
  list-style: none;
  padding: 0;
  width: 400px;
}

li {
  flex-grow: 1;
}

button {
  width: 100%;
}

Result

• Other list-related HTML Elements: <ol>, <ul>, and <li>.