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Dialog

Dialogs inform users about a task and can contain critical information, require decisions, or involve multiple tasks.

A Dialog is a type of modal window that appears in front of app content to provide critical information or ask for a decision. Dialogs disable all app functionality when they appear, and remain on screen until confirmed, dismissed, or a required action has been taken.

Dialogs are purposefully interruptive, so they should be used sparingly.

Introduction

Dialogs are implemented using a collection of related components:

  • Dialog: the parent component that renders the modal.
  • Dialog Title: a wrapper used for the title of a Dialog.
  • Dialog Actions: an optional container for a Dialog's Buttons.
  • Dialog Content: an optional container for displaying the Dialog's content.
  • Dialog Content Text: a wrapper for text inside of <DialogContent />.
  • Slide: optional Transition used to slide the Dialog in from the edge of the screen.
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Basics

import Dialog from '@mui/material/Dialog';
import DialogTitle from '@mui/material/DialogTitle';

Alerts

Alerts are urgent interruptions, requiring acknowledgement, that inform the user about a situation.

Most alerts don't need titles. They summarize a decision in a sentence or two by either:

  • Asking a question (for example "Delete this conversation?")
  • Making a statement related to the action buttons

Use title bar alerts only for high-risk situations, such as the potential loss of connectivity. Users should be able to understand the choices based on the title and button text alone.

If a title is required:

  • Use a clear question or statement with an explanation in the content area, such as "Erase USB storage?".
  • Avoid apologies, ambiguity, or questions, such as "Warning!" or "Are you sure?"

Transitions

You can also swap out the transition, the next example uses Slide.

Form dialogs

Form dialogs allow users to fill out form fields within a dialog. For example, if your site prompts for potential subscribers to fill in their email address, they can fill out the email field and touch 'Submit'.

Customization

Here is an example of customizing the component. You can learn more about this in the overrides documentation page.

The dialog has a close button added to aid usability.

Full-screen dialogs

Optional sizes

You can set a dialog maximum width by using the maxWidth enumerable in combination with the fullWidth boolean. When the fullWidth prop is true, the dialog will adapt based on the maxWidth value.

Responsive full-screen

You may make a dialog responsively full screen using useMediaQuery.

import useMediaQuery from '@mui/material/useMediaQuery';

function MyComponent() {
  const theme = useTheme();
  const fullScreen = useMediaQuery(theme.breakpoints.down('md'));

  return <Dialog fullScreen={fullScreen} />;
}

Confirmation dialogs

Confirmation dialogs require users to explicitly confirm their choice before an option is committed. For example, users can listen to multiple ringtones but only make a final selection upon touching "OK".

Touching "Cancel" in a confirmation dialog, cancels the action, discards any changes, and closes the dialog.

Interruptions
Phone ringtone

Dione

Default notification ringtone

Tethys

Non-modal dialog

Dialogs can also be non-modal, meaning they don't interrupt user interaction behind it. Visit the Nielsen Norman Group article for more in-depth guidance about modal vs. non-modal dialog usage.

The demo below shows a persistent cookie banner, a common non-modal dialog use case.

Draggable dialog

You can create a draggable dialog by using react-draggable. To do so, you can pass the imported Draggable component as the PaperComponent of the Dialog component. This will make the entire dialog draggable.

Scrolling long content

When dialogs become too long for the user's viewport or device, they scroll.

  • scroll=paper the content of the dialog scrolls within the paper element.
  • scroll=body the content of the dialog scrolls within the body element.

Try the demo below to see what we mean:

Performance

Follow the Modal performance section.

Limitations

Follow the Modal limitations section.

Supplementary projects

For more advanced use cases you might be able to take advantage of:

material-ui-confirm

stars npm downloads

The package material-ui-confirm provides dialogs for confirming user actions without writing boilerplate code.

Accessibility

Follow the Modal accessibility section.

Toolpad (Beta)

useDialogs

You can create and manipulate dialogs imperatively with the useDialogs() API in @toolpad/core. This hook handles

  • state management for opening and closing dialogs
  • passing data to dialogs and receiving results back from them
  • stacking multiple dialogs
  • themed, asynchronous versions of window.alert(), window.confirm() and window.prompt()

The following example demonstrates some of these features:

const handleDelete = async () => {
  const id = await dialogs.prompt('Enter the ID to delete', {
    okText: 'Delete',
    cancelText: 'Cancel',
  });

  if (id) {
    const deleteConfirmed = await dialogs.confirm(
      `Are you sure you want to delete "${id}"?`,
    );
    if (deleteConfirmed) {
      try {
        setIsDeleting(true);
        await mockApiDelete(id);
        dialogs.alert('Deleted!');
      } catch (error) {
        const message = error instanceof Error ? error.message : 'Unknown error';
        await dialogs.open(MyCustomDialog, { id, error: message });
      } finally {
        setIsDeleting(false);
      }
    }
  }
};

API

See the documentation below for a complete reference to all of the props and classes available to the components mentioned here.