20 CSS Link Hover Effect Designs
Glitch Split
RGB-channel split shudders across the text on hover (cyan + magenta offsets via text-shadow), reading as video corruption. Honours prefers-reduced-motion.
Glitch Split the 14th of 20 designs in the 20 CSS Link Hover Effect Designs collection. The design is implemented in pure CSS — no JavaScript required. Copy the HTML and CSS panels below into your project. Because the demo is pure CSS, it works in any framework or templating engine you happen to use. The design honours prefers-reduced-motion and uses real semantic markup, so it ships accessibility-ready out of the box.
Live preview
The code
<a href="#" class="cle-glitch" data-text="System.exit(0)">System.exit(0)</a>
.cle-glitch {
position: relative;
display: inline-block;
color: #f0eeff;
font:
700 16px/1.2 ui-monospace,
monospace;
text-decoration: none;
letter-spacing: 0.02em;
}
.cle-glitch:hover,
.cle-glitch:focus-visible {
animation: cle-glitch-shake 0.35s steps(2) infinite;
text-shadow:
2px 0 #ff3d6e,
-2px 0 #00e5ff,
0 0 12px rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.2);
}
@keyframes cle-glitch-shake {
0% {
transform: translate(0, 0);
}
25% {
transform: translate(-1px, 1px);
}
50% {
transform: translate(1px, -1px);
}
75% {
transform: translate(-1px, -1px);
}
100% {
transform: translate(1px, 1px);
}
}
@media (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce) {
.cle-glitch:hover,
.cle-glitch:focus-visible {
animation: none;
}
}