Removing ::shadow and /deep/ in Chrome 63

To see all deprecations and removals for this and previous versions of Chrome, visit the deprecations page.

By Rob Dodson

Rob is a contributor to WebFundamentals

Starting in Chrome 63, you cannot use the shadow-piercing selectors ::shadow and /deep/ to style content inside of a shadow root.

• The /deep/ combinator will act as a descendant selector. x-foo /deep/ div will work like x-foo div.
• The ::shadow pseudo-element will not match any elements.

Note: If your site uses Polymer, the team has put together a thorough guide walking through steps to migrate off of ::shadow and /deep/.

The decision to remove

The ::shadow and /deep/ were deprecated in Chrome version 45. This was decided by all of the participants at the April 2015 Web Components meetup.

The primary concern with shadow-piercing selectors is that they violate encapsulation and create situations where a component can no longer change its internal implementation.

Note: For the moment, ::shadow and /deep/ will continue to work with JavaScript APIs like querySelector() and querySelectorAll(). Ongoing support for these APIs is being discussed on GitHub.

The CSS Shadow Parts spec is being advanced as an alternative to shadow piercing selectors. Shadow Parts will allow a component author to expose named elements in a way that preserves encapsulation and still allows page authors the ability to style multiple properties at once.

What should I do if my site uses ::shadow and /deep/?

The ::shadow and /deep/ selectors only affect legacy Shadow DOM v0 components. If you're using Shadow DOM v1, you should not need to change anything on your site.

You can use Chrome Canary to verify your site does not break with these new changes. If you notice issues, try and remove any usage of ::shadow and /deep/. If it's too difficult to remove usage of these selectors, consider switching from native shadow DOM over to the shady DOM polyfill. You should only need to make this change if your site relies on native shadow DOM v0.

More information

Intent to Remove | Chromestatus Tracker | Chromium Bug