Unable to center navbar properly

Question

I am currently creating a navbar for my personal website, in the process of making it look decent on mobile I can't seem to center the navbar properly. It leans to the right no matter what I do.As you can see, it does not align with the pink box above (which is centered correctly)

Here is my code for the navbar. I have tried margin and padding properties but they do not have an affect at all inside the @media property. I had also previously made the navbar with flexbox and I ran into the same issue where it leans to the right. I have changed the display to flex INSIDE the @media property and it also leans to the right and neither margin nor padding affect it at all.

.navbar {
  padding: 1px 2px;
  border: 4px double;
  justify-content: center;
  margin-left: 43%;
  margin-right: 43%;
  border-radius: 8px;
  background-color: rgba(19, 19, 22, 0.7);
  border-color: white;
}

.navbar ul {
  list-style: none;
  text-align: center;
  margin: 0;
  padding: 0;
}

.navbar li {
  display: inline-block;
  margin: 3px 13px;
}

@media (max-width: 500px) {
  .navbar {
    width: fit-content;
  }
  .navbar ul {
    text-align: center;
  }
}

<nav class="navbar">
  <ul>
    <li><a href="index.html">Home</a></li>
    <li><a href="about.html">About</a></li>
    <li><a href="contacts.html">Contacts</a></li>
  </ul>
</nav>

In my @media I have the width:fit-content property however if I remove it, it doesn't lean to the right anymore but the text overlaps the border.

Answer 1

I've made some changes to your navbar. First, I wrapped it inside a div with the class d-flex justify-content-center. This helps to center it properly on the page. Then, I removed margins from the navbar class and also removed the @media CSS. Now, your navigation bar should be nicely centered and look good on mobile devices too.

.navbar {
  padding: 1px 2px;
  border: 4px double;
  border-radius: 8px;
  background-color: rgba(19, 19, 22, 0.7);
  border-color: white;
}

.navbar ul {
  list-style: none;
  text-align: center;
  margin: 0;
  padding: 0;
}

.navbar li {
  display: inline-block;
  margin: 3px 13px;
}

.d-flex {
  display: flex;
}
.justify-content-center {
  justify-content: center;
}

<div class="d-flex justify-content-center">
  <nav class="navbar">
    <ul>
      <li><a href="index.html">Home</a></li>
      <li><a href="about.html">About</a></li>
      <li><a href="contacts.html">Contacts</a></li>
    </ul>
  </nav>
</div>