Mezo Istvan does a good job of covering the problem and a solution to it in a blog post on Medium¹.

If you tap on something that has a :hover state but you don’t leave the page then, on a mobile device, there is a chance that :hover state “sticks.” You’ll see this with stuff like jump-links used as tabs or buttons that trigger on-page functionality.

button:hover {
  border: 3px solid green; /* might stick! */
}

The solution, or trick, is a new(ish) “CSS4” media query that allows you only to apply styles on devices with hover capability.

@media (hover: hover) {
  button:hover {
    border: 3px solid green; /* solves sticky problem */
  }
}

Your typical touch screen mobile device will fail that media query, the style won’t apply, and you’ll avoid the sticky problem.

Support is solid, so not much worry there.

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