Features

Side Navigation Strips

On wide screens (1280px and up), full-height vertical strips sit in the empty gutters beside the page content. A left-facing chevron navigates to the previous page, a right-facing one to the next. They sit between the sidebars and the content and never cover the prose or the table of contents.

Hovering or keyboard-focusing a strip reveals a tooltip with the destination page title and the configured keyboard shortcut. Chevrons flip automatically in right-to-left (RTL) layouts.

Compact Floating Buttons

Below 1280px, the strips become small circular buttons pinned mid-height at the viewport edges. They fade out after a period of inactivity and reappear when you scroll, keeping the screen uncluttered on smaller devices. The delay and scroll threshold are configurable via the scrollBehavior option. Tabbing to a hidden button brings the pair back.

Touch Swipe Gestures

Swiping anywhere on the page navigates between pages, following the “turn the page” metaphor: swipe left for next, swipe right for previous. Swipes must travel at least 75 pixels and be more horizontal than vertical, so normal scrolling never triggers navigation. While dragging, the content shifts slightly in the swipe direction as visual feedback and springs back on release.

Keyboard Navigation

Default shortcuts are Ctrl + Left Arrow (previous) and Ctrl + Right Arrow (next), customizable via the navShortcuts option. Shortcuts are suppressed while typing in a form field or while the search dialog is open.

Accessibility

• Navigation links carry rel="prev" / rel="next" semantics and descriptive aria-labels with aria-keyshortcuts
• The visual tooltip is hidden from assistive technology to avoid double announcements
• Hover effects and tooltips also apply on keyboard focus (:focus-visible)
• All animations are disabled when the user prefers reduced motion
• Starlight’s built-in previous/next pagination at the bottom of the page is preserved as an always-visible fallback