Silent removal of cursor: pointer on <button> in Tailwind v4

[JoshuaS98]

Issue

It appears that Tailwind CSS v4 removed the following base style without documentation or explanation:

button,
[role="button"] {
  cursor: pointer;
}

This rule was present in Tailwind v3.4.17 and can be found in preflight.css. However, by v4.0.0-alpha.22, it’s no longer included, and there’s no mention of this change in the release notes or documentation.

Request:

1. Could Tailwind team (@RobinMalfait, since you made the change) confirm whether this was an intentional change?

2. If intentional, what was the reason?

Thank you.

[wongjn]

I'm not part of the Tailwind team, but here's my take on it. I believe it is intentional. If we look at #14061, (which talks about some rule overriding cursor which is no longer needed), we can see it references #8961 and #8962. I believe these could be the reasons why buttons do not have cursor: pointer in preflight in v4.

[RobinMalfait]

It was not silently removed, we documented it in the upgrade guide here: https://tailwindcss.com/docs/upgrade-guide#buttons-use-the-default-cursor

Buttons now use cursor: default instead of cursor: pointer to match the default browser behavior.

[JoshuaS98]

Missed that one, thank you!