<div class="error error--serious">
  Oh no! You've been hacked!
</div>

.error {
  border: 1px #f00;
  background-color: #fdd;
}

.error--serious {
  border-width: 3px;
}

Sass’s @extend rule solves this. It’s written @extend <selector>, and it tells Sass that one selector should inherit the styles of another.

.error {
  border: 1px #f00;
  background-color: #fdd;

  &--serious {
    @extend .error;
    border-width: 3px;
  }
}

.error
  border: 1px #f00
  background-color: #fdd

  &--serious
    @extend .error
    border-width: 3px

.error, .error--serious {
  border: 1px #f00;
  background-color: #fdd;
}
.error--serious {
  border-width: 3px;
}

When one class extends another, Sass styles all elements that match the extender as though they also match the class being extended. When one class selector extends another, it works exactly as though you added the extended class to every element in your HTML that already had the extending class. You can just write class="error--serious", and Sass will make sure it’s styled as though it had class="error" as well.

Of course, selectors aren’t just used on their own in style rules. Sass knows to extend everywhere the selector is used. This ensures that your elements are styled exactly as if they matched the extended selector.

.error:hover {
  background-color: #fee;
}

.error--serious {
  @extend .error;
  border-width: 3px;
}

.error:hover
  background-color: #fee


.error--serious
  @extend .error
  border-width: 3px

.error:hover, .error--serious:hover {
  background-color: #fee;
}

.error--serious {
  border-width: 3px;
}

How It Works

Unlike mixins, which copy styles into the current style rule, @extend updates style rules that contain the extended selector so that they contain the extending selector as well. When extending selectors, Sass does intelligent unification:

• It never generates selectors like #main#footer that can’t possibly match any elements.

• It ensures that complex selectors are interleaved so that they work no matter which order the HTML elements are nested.

• It trims redundant selectors as much as possible, while still ensuring that the specificity is greater than or equal to that of the extender.

• It knows when one selector matches everything another does, and can combine them together.

• It intelligently handles combinators, universal selectors, and pseudo-classes that contain selectors.

.content nav.sidebar {
  @extend .info;
}

// This won't be extended, because `p` is incompatible with `nav`.
p.info {
  background-color: #dee9fc;
}

// There's no way to know whether `<div class="guide">` will be inside or
// outside `<div class="content">`, so Sass generates both to be safe.
.guide .info {
  border: 1px solid rgba(#000, 0.8);
  border-radius: 2px;
}

// Sass knows that every element matching "main.content" also matches ".content"
// and avoids generating unnecessary interleaved selectors.
main.content .info {
  font-size: 0.8em;
}

.content nav.sidebar
  @extend .info


// This won't be extended, because `p` is incompatible with `nav`.
p.info
  background-color: #dee9fc


// There's no way to know whether `<div class="guide">` will be inside or
// outside `<div class="content">`, so Sass generates both to be safe.
.guide .info
  border: 1px solid rgba(#000, 0.8)
  border-radius: 2px


// Sass knows that every element matching "main.content" also matches ".content"
// and avoids generating unnecessary interleaved selectors.
main.content .info
  font-size: 0.8em

p.info {
  background-color: #dee9fc;
}

.guide .info, .guide .content nav.sidebar, .content .guide nav.sidebar {
  border: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8);
  border-radius: 2px;
}

main.content .info, main.content nav.sidebar {
  font-size: 0.8em;
}

Placeholder Selectors

Sometimes you want to write a style rule that’s only intended to be extended. In that case, you can use placeholder selectors, which look like class selectors that start with % instead of .. Any selectors that include placeholders aren’t included in the CSS output, but selectors that extend them are.

.alert:hover, %strong-alert {
  font-weight: bold;
}

%strong-alert:hover {
  color: red;
}

.alert:hover, %strong-alert
  font-weight: bold


%strong-alert:hover 
  color: red

.alert:hover {
  font-weight: bold;
}

Private Placeholders

Like module members, a placeholder selector can be marked private by starting its name with either - or _. A private placeholder selector can only be extended within the stylesheet that defines it. To any other stylesheets, it will look as though that selector doesn’t exist.

Extension Scope

When one stylesheet extends a selector, that extension will only affect style rules written in upstream modules—that is, modules that are loaded by that stylesheet using the @use rule or the @forward rule, modules loaded by those modules, and so on. This helps make your @extend rules more predictable, ensuring that they affect only the styles you were aware of when you wrote them.

Mandatory and Optional Extends

Normally, if an @extend doesn’t match any selectors in the stylesheet, Sass will produce an error. This helps protect from typos or from renaming a selector without renaming the selectors that inherit from it. Extends that require that the extended selector exists are mandatory.

This may not always be what you want, though. If you want the @extend to do nothing if the extended selector doesn’t exist, just add !optional to the end.

Extends or Mixins?

Extends and mixins are both ways of encapsulating and re-using styles in Sass, which naturally raises the question of when to use which one. Mixins are obviously necessary when you need to configure the styles using arguments, but what if they’re just a chunk of styles?

As a rule of thumb, extends are the best option when you’re expressing a relationship between semantic classes (or other semantic selectors). Because an element with class .error--serious is an error, it makes sense for it to extend .error. But for non-semantic collections of styles, writing a mixin can avoid cascade headaches and make it easier to configure down the line.

Limitations

Disallowed Selectors

Compatibility (No Compound Extensions):

Dart Sass

✓

LibSass

✗

Ruby Sass

✗

▶

Only simple selectors—individual selectors like .info or a—can be extended. If .message.info could be extended, the definition of @extend says that elements matching the extender would be styled as though they matched .message.info. That’s just the same as matching both .message and .info, so there wouldn’t be any benefit in writing that instead of @extend .message, .info.

Similarly, if .main .info could be extended, it would do (almost) the same thing as extending .info on its own. The subtle differences aren’t worth the confusion of looking like it’s doing something substantially different, so this isn’t allowed either.

.alert {
  @extend .message.info;
  //      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  // Error: Write @extend .message, .info instead.

  @extend .main .info;
  //      ^^^^^^^^^^^
  // Error: write @extend .info instead.
}

.alert
  @extend .message.info
  //      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  // Error: Write @extend .message, .info instead.

  @extend .main .info
  //      ^^^^^^^^^^^
  // Error: write @extend .info instead.

HTML Heuristics

When @extend interleaves complex selectors, it doesn’t generate all possible combinations of ancestor selectors. Many of the selectors it could generate are unlikely to actually match real HTML, and generating them all would make stylesheets way too big for very little real value. Instead, it uses a heuristic: it assumes that each selector’s ancestors will be self-contained, without being interleaved with any other selector’s ancestors.

header .warning li {
  font-weight: bold;
}

aside .notice dd {
  // Sass doesn't generate CSS to match the <dd> in
  //
  // <header>
  //   <aside>
  //     <div class="warning">
  //       <div class="notice">
  //         <dd>...</dd>
  //       </div>
  //     </div>
  //   </aside>
  // </header>
  //
  // because matching all elements like that would require us to generate nine
  // new selectors instead of just two.
  @extend li;
}

header .warning li
  font-weight: bold


aside .notice dd
  // Sass doesn't generate CSS to match the <dd> in
  //
  // <header>
  //   <aside>
  //     <div class="warning">
  //       <div class="notice">
  //         <dd>...</dd>
  //       </div>
  //     </div>
  //   </aside>
  // </header>
  //
  // because matching all elements like that would require us to generate nine
  // new selectors instead of just two.
  @extend li

header .warning li, header .warning aside .notice dd, aside .notice header .warning dd {
  font-weight: bold;
}

Extend in @media

While @extend is allowed within @media and other CSS at-rules, it’s not allowed to extend selectors that appear outside its at-rule. This is because the extending selector only applies within the given media context, and there’s no way to make sure that restriction is preserved in the generated selector without duplicating the entire style rule.

@media screen and (max-width: 600px) {
  .error--serious {
    @extend .error;
    //      ^^^^^^
    // Error: ".error" was extended in @media, but used outside it.
  }
}

.error {
  border: 1px #f00;
  background-color: #fdd;
}

@media screen and (max-width: 600px)
  .error--serious
    @extend .error
    //      ^^^^^^
    // Error: ".error" was extended in @media, but used outside it.



.error
  border: 1px #f00
  background-color: #fdd