Use when building a modal surface that must look correct on both desktop and mobile in shadcn ui, when the design calls for a centered Dialog on large screens but a bottom-sheet Drawer on phones, when the user reports that the current Dialog feels cramped on a phone or that the on-screen keyboard covers the form fields, when wiring a delete-confirmation, edit-profile, filter-panel, share-sheet, or settings modal that must respect platform conventions (native swipe-down dismiss on iOS / Android), when building a responsive Combobox where the dropdown must become a full-height Drawer on mobile, when porting an existing Dialog to also work well on touch devices, or when the user asks "how do I make a responsive modal". Prevents the recurring failure modes of an ad-hoc responsive modal: rendering BOTH the Dialog and the Drawer simultaneously so two open surfaces appear at once and the ARIA tree has duplicate role=dialog nodes, calling useMediaQuery without an SSR guard so Next.js logs a hydration mismatch on ever
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Use when building a modal surface that must look correct on both desktop and mobile in shadcn ui, when the design calls for a centered Dialog on large screens but a bottom-sheet Drawer on phones, when the user reports that the current Dialog feels cramped on a phone or that the on-screen keyboard covers the form fields, when wiring a delete-confirmation, edit-profile, filter-panel, share-sheet, or settings modal that must respect platform conventions (native swipe-down dismiss on iOS / Android), when building a responsive Combobox where the dropdown must become a full-height Drawer on mobile, when porting an existing Dialog to also work well on touch devices, or when the user asks "how do I make a responsive modal". Prevents the recurring failure modes of an ad-hoc responsive modal: rendering BOTH the Dialog and the Drawer simultaneously so two open surfaces appear at once and the ARIA tree has duplicate role=dialog nodes, calling useMediaQuery without an SSR guard so Next.js logs a hydration mismatch on every first paint, keeping two separate useState pairs for the Dialog open state and the Drawer open state so closing one does not close the other when the viewport resizes mid-session, hard-coding a 768px or 640px check inline in every component instead of extracting one named useMediaQuery hook, rendering different field sets or different content per breakpoint so the user loses input when they rotate the device, omitting DialogTitle and DialogDescription (or DrawerTitle and DrawerDescription) so the screen reader announces an unlabelled dialog, and forgetting that DrawerClose must wrap an asChild Button to actually close the Drawer. Covers the canonical Dialog-desktop / Drawer-mobile pattern from the official shadcn ui responsive example, the useMediaQuery hook with useSyncExternalStore (SSR-safe), the shared content component contract (same component for both surfaces, optional className for layout adjustments), the single-source open state pattern (one useState shared by Dialog and Drawer), the breakpoint choice rationale (md: 768px is the shadcn default), the ResponsiveModal orchestrator pattern that hides the branch from feature code, and the responsive Combobox variant (Popover-on-desktop / Drawer-on-mobile). This skill is the IMPLEMENTATION recipe that orchestrates the primitives taught in shadcn-syntax-dialog (B4) and shadcn-syntax-drawer (B5). Read those first if the Dialog or Drawer subcomponent trees are unclear. Keywords: responsive dialog, mobile drawer, desktop dialog, useMediaQuery, responsive modal, Dialog mobile, Drawer mobile, how do I make a responsive modal, breakpoint switch, vaul mobile, shadcn responsive modal, Dialog Drawer pattern, conditional render Dialog Drawer, matchMedia react, useSyncExternalStore media query, SSR safe useMediaQuery, hydration mismatch useMediaQuery, shared form Dialog Drawer, ResponsiveModal component, responsive Combobox Popover Drawer, Dialog cramped on phone, Drawer on desktop looks wrong, bottom sheet desktop, swipe down dismiss mobile, why is my modal too small on mobile, why does my modal show twice, 768px breakpoint shadcn, md breakpoint Tailwind, vaul on desktop, Drawer instead of Dialog on mobile, delete confirmation responsive, edit profile responsive modal, filter panel mobile drawer.
license
MIT
compatibility
Designed for Claude Code. Requires shadcn ui evergreen-2026.
This skill is the IMPLEMENTATION recipe for the most-requested compositional pattern in shadcn ui: a single modal surface that renders as a centered Dialog on desktop and as a bottom-sheet Drawer on mobile. The pattern comes directly from the official drawer-dialog example in the shadcn ui repository.
ALWAYS read shadcn-syntax-dialog first if the Dialog subcomponent tree (DialogTrigger, DialogContent, DialogHeader, DialogTitle, DialogDescription, DialogFooter, DialogClose) is unclear.
ALWAYS read shadcn-syntax-drawer first if the Drawer subcomponent tree, the direction prop, or the Vaul-specific semantics (snap points, dismissible, repositionInputs) are unclear.
ONE useState pair for the open flag. Dialog and Drawer share it.
ONE useMediaQuery hook to pick the surface. NEVER hard-code the breakpoint inline.
ONE shared content component (<ProfileForm />, <DeleteForm />, etc). Same props on both branches.
NEVER render both Dialog and Drawer at the same time. Use if (isDesktop) return ... (early return), NOT both branches mounted.
ALWAYS include DialogTitle + DialogDescription on the desktop branch and DrawerTitle + DrawerDescription on the mobile branch. Both Radix Dialog and Vaul require a labelled title for screen readers.
Decision Tree: Dialog only, Drawer only, or responsive?
Is the modal ALWAYS modal (blocking, must-acknowledge)?
├─ YES, AND target is form-factor-agnostic (edit profile, delete confirm, filters)
│ └─ USE responsive Dialog + Drawer (this skill)
├─ YES, AND target is desktop-only admin UI
│ └─ USE Dialog only (see shadcn-syntax-dialog)
└─ NO, it is a mobile-first action sheet (share, sort, add-to-cart)
└─ USE Drawer only on all viewports (see shadcn-syntax-drawer)
When in doubt: responsive. The official example uses it for an "Edit Profile" form, which is the canonical case.
Step 1: Install the useMediaQuery hook
shadcn ui itself does NOT ship a useMediaQuery hook in components/ui/. You write it once into src/hooks/use-media-query.ts. The official shadcn ui example imports from @/hooks/use-media-query, which means the project owner authored it.
ALWAYS use the useSyncExternalStore variant (React 18+). NEVER use a useState + useEffect variant in a Next.js App Router project, because the initial render runs server-side, where window does not exist, and a useEffect variant produces a hydration mismatch on the very first paint.
Full implementation in references/examples.md. Signature:
functionuseMediaQuery(query: string): boolean
Returns true when the query matches, false otherwise. On the server, useSyncExternalStore falls back to the getServerSnapshot slot, which in this hook throws. shadcn ui's official example calls the hook from inside a "use client" component, so the server never executes it.
Breakpoint choice: (min-width: 768px) matches Tailwind's md: breakpoint. This is what the official shadcn drawer-dialog example uses and what this skill standardizes on. If a project uses a different design system breakpoint, pass it as an argument to a ResponsiveModal prop. NEVER copy the literal 768px across many components.
Step 2: Write the shared content component
The single most important design rule of the pattern: ONE content component renders inside BOTH surfaces. NEVER duplicate the form, body, or action layout per branch. NEVER show fewer fields on mobile and more on desktop, because a viewport rotation mid-edit then silently drops the hidden state.
The shared component MUST accept className (because Drawer often needs px-4 padding that Dialog already supplies via DialogContent's default padding) and MAY accept callbacks like onSubmit that close the modal.
Full example with all imports in references/examples.md.
Step 3: Wire the conditional render
The canonical shape from the official shadcn ui example, with the responsive branching kept inside ONE component:
"use client"import * asReactfrom"react"import { useMediaQuery } from"@/hooks/use-media-query"import { Button } from"@/components/ui/button"import {
Dialog, DialogContent, DialogDescription, DialogHeader,
DialogTitle, DialogTrigger,
} from"@/components/ui/dialog"import {
Drawer, DrawerClose, DrawerContent, DrawerDescription,
DrawerFooter, DrawerHeader, DrawerTitle, DrawerTrigger,
} from"@/components/ui/drawer"exportfunctionEditProfileModal() {
const [open, setOpen] = React.useState(false)
const isDesktop = useMediaQuery("(min-width: 768px)")
if (isDesktop) {
return (
<Dialogopen={open}onOpenChange={setOpen}><DialogTriggerasChild><Buttonvariant="outline">Edit Profile</Button></DialogTrigger><DialogContentclassName="sm:max-w-[425px]"><DialogHeader><DialogTitle>Edit profile</DialogTitle><DialogDescription>
Make changes to your profile here. Click save when done.
</DialogDescription></DialogHeader><ProfileFormonDone={() => setOpen(false)} />
</DialogContent></Dialog>
)
}
return (
<Draweropen={open}onOpenChange={setOpen}><DrawerTriggerasChild><Buttonvariant="outline">Edit Profile</Button></DrawerTrigger><DrawerContent><DrawerHeaderclassName="text-left"><DrawerTitle>Edit profile</DrawerTitle><DrawerDescription>
Make changes to your profile here. Click save when done.
</DrawerDescription></DrawerHeader><ProfileFormclassName="px-4"onDone={() => setOpen(false)} />
<DrawerFooterclassName="pt-2"><DrawerCloseasChild><Buttonvariant="outline">Cancel</Button></DrawerClose></DrawerFooter></DrawerContent>
)
}
Note four details from the official example:
DialogContent carries className="sm:max-w-[425px]" so it does not stretch to the full Dialog max-width.
DrawerHeader carries className="text-left" because the default DrawerHeader is centered (mobile bottom sheet convention) but a form header reads better left-aligned.
ProfileForm carries className="px-4" only inside the Drawer, because DialogContent already pads its content while DrawerContent does not pad horizontally.
DrawerFooter contains a DrawerClose asChild Cancel button. The Dialog branch does not include a Cancel button because Dialog ships a built-in close affordance (top-right X) via DialogContent's showCloseButton default. The Drawer does not.
Step 4: Extract the orchestrator (ResponsiveModal)
After two or three usages of the pattern, the if-else branching duplicates. Extract a ResponsiveModal orchestrator that hides the branch from feature code. ALWAYS forward open, onOpenChange, title, description, and children so the orchestrator stays content-agnostic.
<ResponsiveModal
open={open}
onOpenChange={setOpen}
title="Edit profile"
description="Make changes to your profile here."
trigger={<Buttonvariant="outline">Edit Profile</Button>}
>
<ProfileFormclassName="md:px-0 px-4"onDone={() => setOpen(false)} />
</ResponsiveModal>
The orchestrator deliberately does NOT include a DrawerFooter + DrawerClose block, because the Drawer footer is content-specific (Cancel vs. Confirm vs. Apply). Place footer buttons inside children. See references/examples.md for a DeleteConfirmation variant that adds an explicit destructive-action footer.
Step 5: Breakpoint choice rationale
(min-width: 768px) maps to Tailwind's md: and matches the official shadcn drawer-dialog example. The rationale:
iPhone 14 Pro Max landscape is 932px wide so it lands on the Dialog branch in landscape; the Drawer is reserved for portrait phones, which is where the bottom-sheet ergonomics matter (thumb reach).
iPad Mini portrait is 768px so it lands on the boundary; the example uses min-width: 768px, which includes 768px exactly, so iPad Mini portrait gets the Dialog.
Smaller tablets (768px landscape but narrower in portrait) follow the same logic.
If the design system uses a different breakpoint (some teams prefer 640px to match Tailwind sm:, others 1024px to match lg: because they consider iPad-sized devices "mobile"), pass it via the ResponsiveModalbreakpoint prop. NEVER fork the hook per call site.
Anti-patterns
NEVER render both <Dialog> and <Drawer> and toggle them via CSS (hidden md:block + block md:hidden). Both Radix Dialog and Vaul mount portal nodes with role="dialog" and aria-modal="true"; rendering both creates a duplicated ARIA tree, focus-trap collisions, and Title must be inside Dialog.Root warnings from Radix when Vaul portals into a Dialog-managed focus zone. Use the early-return pattern instead.
Full list of seven failure modes with concrete examples in references/anti-patterns.md.
shadcn-impl-form-validation: when the responsive modal hosts a form (90% of cases), the form-state, submit, and setError patterns live here.
shadcn-impl-rsc-vs-client-boundaries: the responsive modal MUST live in a "use client" boundary because useMediaQuery reads window.matchMedia. The orchestrator file itself carries "use client"; pages importing it stay server components.
Sources
Official responsive Dialog/Drawer example: apps/v4/registry/new-york-v4/examples/drawer-dialog.tsx in shadcn-ui/ui (verified 2026-05-19).
