Bootstrap Basics from the Source

Download Bootstrap

Bootstrap has a few easy ways to quickly get started, each one appealing to a different skill level and use case. Read through to see what suits your particular needs.

Compiled CSS, JS, and fonts

The fastest way to get Bootstrap is to download the precompiled and minified versions of our CSS, JavaScript, and fonts. No documentation or original source code files are included.
Download precompiled Bootstrap

Additional downloads

Download source code

Get the latest Bootstrap LESS and JavaScript source code by downloading it directly from GitHub.

Clone or fork via GitHub

Visit us on GitHub to clone or fork the Bootstrap project.

Install with Bower

Install and manage Bootstrap's styles, JavaScript, and documentation using Bower.

$ bower install bootstrap

Bootstrap CDN

The folks over at MaxCDN graciously provide CDN support for Bootstrap's CSS and JavaScript. Just use these Bootstrap CDN links.

<!-- Latest compiled and minified CSS -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="//netdna.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.0.3/css/bootstrap.min.css">

<!-- Optional theme -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="//netdna.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.0.3/css/bootstrap-theme.min.css">

<!-- Latest compiled and minified JavaScript -->
<script src="//netdna.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.0.3/js/bootstrap.min.js"></script>

Compiling Bootstrap's LESS files

If you work with Bootstrap's uncompiled source code, you need to compile the LESS files to produce usable CSS files. For compiling LESS files into CSS, we only officially support Recess, which is Twitter's CSS hinter based on less.js.

What's included

Bootstrap is downloadable in two forms, within which you'll find the following directories and files, logically grouping common resources and providing both compiled and minified variations.

jQuery required

Please note that all JavaScript plugins require jQuery to be included, as shown in the starter template. Consult our bower.json to see which versions of jQuery are supported.

Precompiled Bootstrap

Once downloaded, unzip the compressed folder to see the structure of (the compiled) Bootstrap. You'll see something like this:

bootstrap/
├── css/
│   ├── bootstrap.css
│   ├── bootstrap.min.css
│   ├── bootstrap-theme.css
│   └── bootstrap-theme.min.css
├── js/
│   ├── bootstrap.js
│   └── bootstrap.min.js
└── fonts/
    ├── glyphicons-halflings-regular.eot
    ├── glyphicons-halflings-regular.svg
    ├── glyphicons-halflings-regular.ttf
    └── glyphicons-halflings-regular.woff

This is the most basic form of Bootstrap: precompiled files for quick drop-in usage in nearly any web project. We provide compiled CSS and JS (bootstrap.*), as well as compiled and minified CSS and JS (bootstrap.min.*). Fonts from Glyphicons are included, as is the optional Bootstrap theme.

Bootstrap source code

The Bootstrap source code download includes the precompiled CSS, JavaScript, and font assets, along with source LESS, JavaScript, and documentation. More specifically, it includes the following and more:

bootstrap/
├── less/
├── js/
├── fonts/
├── dist/
│   ├── css/
│   ├── js/
│   └── fonts/
├── docs-assets/
├── examples/
└── *.html

The less/, js/, and fonts/ are the source code for our CSS, JS, and icon fonts (respectively). The dist/ folder includes everything listed in the precompiled download section above. docs-assets/, examples/, and all *.html files are for our documentation. Beyond that, any other included file provides support for packages, license information, and development.