Can't apply CSS filter on hover in Safari

Question

I noticed that making changes to the filter property on hover causes strange behavior in Safari 16.2 on macOS:

• It doesn't actually change on hover
• If you click on the text it does partially change, which is definitely not ideal behavior

Using -webkit-filter doesn't help either.

/* problem-relevant CSS */

div{
  background: red;
  filter: grayscale(1);
}
div:hover{
  filter: grayscale(0);
}

/* some further styling for readability */

div{
  display: flex;
  justify-content:center;
  color: white;
  padding:10px;
  font-size:25px;
}

<div>Hover Me</div>

Here’s what it looks like (GIF):

What can be done about this?

Answer 1

This seems to be a webkit rendering error.

I found several solutions:

• Using transform without actually transforming anything (e.g. scale(1)) fixes this somehow
• Short transition:0.05s will help (despite creating an unwanted transition), any longer transition will also do the trick (if you normally want to put transitions here, you might This problem will never be discovered)

Fun fact: Even a shorter transition (i.e. 0.03s) doesn't solve anything.

/* solution-relevant CSS */

div{
  background: red;
  filter: grayscale(1);
}
div:hover{
  filter: grayscale(0);
  transform: scale(1);
}

/* some further styling for readability */

div{
  display: flex;
  justify-content:center;
  color: white;
  padding:10px;
  font-size:25px;
}

Hover Me