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Tap targets are the areas of a web page that users on touch devices can interact with. Buttons, links, and form elements all have tap targets.
Many search engines rank pages based on how mobile-friendly they are. Making sure tap targets are big enough and far enough apart from each other makes your page more mobile-friendly and accessible.
How the Lighthouse tap targets audit fails
Lighthouse flags pages with tap targets that meet both of these conditions:
- The target is smaller than 48 px by 48 px.
- At least 25% the target area within 48 px of the center of the target overlaps with another target.
[Lighthouse audit showing inappropriately sized tap targets]
![[Lighthouse audit showing inappropriately sized tap targets]](https://web.dev/static/docs/lighthouse/seo/tap-targets/image/lighthouse-audit-showing-54fcdfb668c67.png){kind=link}
When the audit fails, Lighthouse lists the results in a table with three columns:
| Tap Target | The tap target that is inappropriately sized. |
| Size | The size of the target's bounding rectangle in pixels. |
| Overlapping Target | Which other tap targets, if any, are too close. |
How to fix your tap targets
Option 1: Increase the size of tap targets that are too small.
Tap targets that are 48 px by 48 px never fail the audit. If you have
elements that shouldn't appear any bigger (for example, icons), try increasing
the padding property:
[Appropriately-sized tap targets]
Use ![[Appropriately-sized tap targets]](https://web.dev/static/docs/lighthouse/seo/tap-targets/image/appropriately-sized-tap-t-45c6e47f9cc6a.jpg){kind=link}
padding to make tap targets bigger without changing the appearance of an element.
Option 2: Increase the spacing between tap targets that are too close together
using properties like margin. 8 px between tap targets is a good starting point,
but is not always enough spacing to pass the audit especially for very small targets.
Resources
- Accessible tap targets: more information on how to ensure your tap targets are accessible by all users.
- Source code for Tap targets are not sized appropriately audit