Particles

An ambient `<canvas>` particle field for hero and section backdrops: `quantity` dots (100 by default) drifting on their own velocities, fading in near the middle and out near the edges, respawned whenever one leaves the box.

decorativeclientuiv1.2.0

Preview

Particles — live rendermagicui-particles--default

Rendered from the story the storybook (a11y) CI gate runs axe against — the preview can't show something that hasn't been verified.

Install

Two equivalent paths — the URL works in any shadcn-CLI setup; the alias works once you've registered @interlace in your components.json.

Via shadcn URL
npx shadcn@latest add https://ds.interlace.tools/r/particles.json
With the @interlace alias
npx shadcn@latest add @interlace/particles

Behavior

What this component does — the keyboard path, the measured colour, the text equivalent and the states it can be in. Every figure below is read out of the test or the source that enforces it by scripts/build-behavior-map.mjs, so nothing here can outlive the gate that keeps it true.

Every semantic colour pair this component's own source uses, measured against the shipped hexes in all 4 theme × scheme combinations. The tightest is foreground on background at 16.19:1 (harbor · dark), against a floor of 4.5:1.

Measured WCAG contrast ratios per token pair and theme
PairinterlacelightinterlacedarkharborlightharbordarkFloor
foreground on backgroundbody copy19.65:116.97:117.74:116.19:14.5:1SC 1.4.3

Text pairs are held to 4.5:1 (WCAG 2.2 SC 1.4.3); borders, rings and chart axes to 3:1 (SC 1.4.11 non-text). Bold is the worst cell in the row — the one a brand fork has to keep an eye on.

Where it renders, how narrow it survives, and whether its lines are inside the coverage gate — three answers a consumer needs before the paste, not after the bug.

Render boundary
'use client'

Hydrates. It brings JavaScript to any route that imports it — put the boundary here, not at the page.

Minimum viewport
none declared

No width floor: it takes the width it is given. Its container owns the layout question.

Coverage gate
not in the gate

The 100% gate currently covers src/charts/**/*.{ts,tsx} and src/lib/**/*.{ts,tsx} and src/primitives/{button-variants,data-state-model,meter-scale,skeleton-variants}.ts and src/primitives/{alert,aspect-ratio,avatar,badge,box,breadcrumb,button,callout,card,checkbox,container,data-state,focus-ring,grade-badge,grid,input,label,meter,pagination,published-date,reading-time,section,section-boundary,separator,skip-link,stack,stat-strip,tag,textarea,typography,visually-hidden}.tsx. This file is outside it — the glob widens in phase 7.2.

History

This component is at v1.2.0, first shipped in @interlace/ui 1.0.0. The version is stamped as a banner into the file the install writes, so the copy in your tree says which one you have — compare it with the number above before deciding whether to re-run the install.

No release note names this component yet. It shipped with the release above and has not changed since — see the full changelog for what moved elsewhere in the DS.

Import

Single named export.

Public API
import { Particles } from '@/components/ui/magicui/particles';

Anatomy

Extracted from the primitive's JSDoc header. The source is the only documentation that can't drift.

Particles                        (div — data-slot="particles", aria-hidden,
                                    pointer-events-none, text-foreground)
    └─ canvas                      (size-full, sized to the wrapper × dpr)
One `useEffect` owns the whole canvas lifecycle — sizing, seeding, the
animation loop, pointer tracking and a 200ms-debounced resize — and
`ParticlesHandle.refresh()` reseeds the field imperatively without a
re-render.

API reference

Parsed from the type declarations in the source — the same file the install writes into your tree, so this table can't drift from the component you get.

ParticlesProps

PropTypeDescription
classNamestringOptional CSS class name. Set a Tailwind text token here to recolor the particles (they paint in the resolved `currentColor`), e.g. `className="text-primary"`.
quantitynumberNumber of particles to render. @default 100
staticitynumberResistance to the pointer — higher values make particles drift less toward the cursor. Has no effect when `interactive` is `false`. @default 50
easenumberEasing factor for pointer-follow interpolation — higher values make the drift slower and smoother. @default 50
sizenumberBase particle radius in CSS pixels. Each particle adds 0–2px of jitter on top of this floor. @default 0.4
vxnumberHorizontal ambient drift applied to every particle each frame. @default 0
vynumberVertical ambient drift applied to every particle each frame. @default 0
interactivebooleanWhether particles drift toward the pointer as it moves over the field. Turn off for a purely ambient backdrop (also skips the listener). @default true

Accessibility

Every story for this component is rendered headlessly and checked with axe-core (wcag2aa, wcag22aa, best-practice, ACT) on every PR. That gate has no continue-on-error, so what ships has zero known violations.

What follows is what static analysis can see. Axe cannot press a key and never sees an overlay open, so the operable-without-a-mouse claim lives in Behavior instead, where the keyboard path is replayed step by step.

Focus + keyboard behaviour
Native element semantics — no interaction layer to get wrong.
Focus ring (WCAG 2.2 SC 2.4.13)
Not focusable — no focus indicator required.
Reduced motion
Animation is gated on prefers-reduced-motion.
ARIA in the source
  • aria-hidden

Examples

3 more states from the same story file.

Dependencies

Base UI primitive
Native / no Base UI dependency
Lucide icons
none
NPM dependencies
none

Source

The full implementation — components/ui/magicui/particles.tsx once installed.

444 lines · TypeScript
"use client";

import {
  forwardRef,
  useCallback,
  useEffect,
  useImperativeHandle,
  useRef,
} from "react";

// @interlace/particles v1.2.0 — Interlace design system.
// Docs, props and live preview: https://ds.interlace.tools/c/particles
// What changed since: https://ds.interlace.tools/c/particles#history
// Generated banner — keep it, the upgrade diff reads this version.

/**
 * @interlace/ui — Particles
 *
 * An ambient `<canvas>` particle field for hero and section backdrops:
 * `quantity` dots (100 by default) drifting on their own velocities, fading in

…424 more lines…

Registry JSON

The raw registry record — what the shadcn CLI fetches.