Also called above the scroll
Above the fold is everything visible on screen before any scrolling, a term borrowed from newspapers folded in half on a newsstand.
The phrase survived the move to screens because the underlying fact survived: the first screen decides whether the rest is read. What changed is that the fold is no longer one line. It sits at a different height on every device, and on mobile it moves as the browser's address bar hides and reappears.
That variability is why fixed-pixel thinking fails. Designing for "the first 600 pixels" produces a layout that works on the tested phone and cuts a heading in half on the next one. Designing for the first *idea* — one claim and one action, whatever the viewport — survives the variation.
Vertical centring is a common casualty here. A block centred in the viewport moves every time the height changes, so on mobile the first field lands somewhere different each time the keyboard opens.
In practice
On a 667-pixel-tall iPhone SE, a 400-pixel hero image leaves room for a heading and nothing else — the button that the page exists for starts below the fold.
Common mistake
Measuring the fold on a desktop monitor. Most social traffic arrives on phones, where the usable first screen is roughly a third of the height.
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