Tailwind CSS v4.1: Text shadows, masks, and tons more

Source: Tailwind Labs Date: 2025-04-03 URL: https://tailwindcss.com/blog/tailwindcss-v4-1

Summary

First minor release on the v4 line, adding text-shadow utilities (text-shadow-2xs through text-shadow-lg), a composable mask-image API (mask-t-from-*, mask-radial-*), colored drop shadows, overflow-wrap utilities (wrap-break-word, wrap-anywhere), pointer media query variants (pointer-fine, pointer-coarse), safe alignment variants, and @source not / @source inline() for scan control. All backward compatible.

Implications

• Text shadows and masks land in core rather than as plugins — consistent with the v4 pattern of pulling commonly needed CSS features in rather than leaving them to the ecosystem.
• wrap-anywhere directly solves a recurring flexbox minimum-size bug without the min-width: 0 hack; will propagate quickly into component libraries built on Tailwind.
• Browser compatibility improvements (OKLab in older Safari, custom property features in Safari 15+, Firefox) signal the v4 team is in stabilization and backport phase — relevant for teams that held off v4 adoption for compatibility reasons.
• The @source inline() safelist syntax with brace expansion is the v4 replacement for the old safelist config key — teams migrating from v3 should watch this when porting.