Tooltips

Documentation and examples for adding custom Bootstrap tooltips with CSS and JavaScript using CSS3 for animations and data-attributes for local title storage.

Overview

Things to know when using the tooltip plugin:

  • Tooltips rely on the 3rd party library Popper.js for positioning. You must include popper.min.js before bootstrap.js in order for tooltips to work!
  • Tooltips are opt-in for performance reasons, so you must initialize them yourself.
  • Tooltips with zero-length titles are never displayed.
  • Specify container: 'body' to avoid rendering problems in more complex components (like our input groups, button groups, etc).
  • Triggering tooltips on hidden elements will not work.
  • Tooltips for .disabled or disabled elements must be triggered on a wrapper element.
  • When triggered from hyperlinks that span multiple lines, tooltips will be centered. Use white-space: nowrap; on your <a>s to avoid this behavior.
  • Tooltips must be hidden before their corresponding elements have been removed from the DOM.

Got all that? Great, let’s see how they work with some examples.

Example: Enable tooltips everywhere

One way to initialize all tooltips on a page would be to select them by their data-toggle attribute:

$(function () {
  $('[data-toggle="tooltip"]').tooltip()
})

Examples

Hover over the links below to see tooltips:

Tight pants next level keffiyeh you probably haven't heard of them. Photo booth beard raw denim letterpress vegan messenger bag stumptown. Farm-to-table seitan, mcsweeney's fixie sustainable quinoa 8-bit american apparel have a terry richardson vinyl chambray. Beard stumptown, cardigans banh mi lomo thundercats. Tofu biodiesel williamsburg marfa, four loko mcsweeney's cleanse vegan chambray. A really ironic artisan whatever keytar, scenester farm-to-table banksy Austin twitter handle freegan cred raw denim single-origin coffee viral.

Static demo

Four options are available: top, right, bottom, and left aligned.

Interactive demo

Hover over the buttons below to see their tooltips.

<button type="button" class="btn btn-secondary" data-toggle="tooltip" data-placement="top" title="Tooltip on top">
  Tooltip on top
</button>
<button type="button" class="btn btn-secondary" data-toggle="tooltip" data-placement="right" title="Tooltip on right">
  Tooltip on right
</button>
<button type="button" class="btn btn-secondary" data-toggle="tooltip" data-placement="bottom" title="Tooltip on bottom">
  Tooltip on bottom
</button>
<button type="button" class="btn btn-secondary" data-toggle="tooltip" data-placement="left" title="Tooltip on left">
  Tooltip on left
</button>

And with custom HTML added:

<button type="button" class="btn btn-secondary" data-toggle="tooltip" data-html="true" title="<em>Tooltip</em> <u>with</u> <b>HTML</b>">
  Tooltip with HTML
</button>

Usage

The tooltip plugin generates content and markup on demand, and by default places tooltips after their trigger element.

Trigger the tooltip via JavaScript:

$('#example').tooltip(options)

Markup

The required markup for a tooltip is only a data attribute and title on the HTML element you wish to have a tooltip. The generated markup of a tooltip is rather simple, though it does require a position (by default, set to top by the plugin).

Making tooltips work for keyboard and assistive technology users

You should only add tooltips to HTML elements that are traditionally keyboard-focusable and interactive (such as links or form controls). Although arbitrary HTML elements (such as <span>s) can be made focusable by adding the tabindex="0" attribute, this will add potentially annoying and confusing tab stops on non-interactive elements for keyboard users. In addition, most assistive technologies currently do not announce the tooltip in this situation.

<!-- HTML to write -->
<a href="#" data-toggle="tooltip" title="Some tooltip text!">Hover over me</a>

<!-- Generated markup by the plugin -->
<div class="tooltip bs-tooltip-top" role="tooltip">
  <div class="arrow"></div>
  <div class="tooltip-inner">
    Some tooltip text!
  </div>
</div>

Options

Options can be passed via data attributes or JavaScript. For data attributes, append the option name to data-, as in data-animation="".

Name Type Default Description
animation boolean true Apply a CSS fade transition to the tooltip
container string | element | false false

Appends the tooltip to a specific element. Example: container: 'body'. This option is particularly useful in that it allows you to position the tooltip in the flow of the document near the triggering element - which will prevent the tooltip from floating away from the triggering element during a window resize.
delay number | object 0

Delay showing and hiding the tooltip (ms) - does not apply to manual trigger type

If a number is supplied, delay is applied to both hide/show

Object structure is: delay: { "show": 500, "hide": 100 }
html boolean false

Allow HTML in the tooltip.

If true, HTML tags in the tooltip's title will be rendered in the tooltip. If false, jQuery's text method will be used to insert content into the DOM.

Use text if you're worried about XSS attacks.
placement string | function 'top'

How to position the tooltip - auto | top | bottom | left | right.
When auto is specified, it will dynamically reorient the tooltip.

When a function is used to determine the placement, it is called with the tooltip DOM node as its first argument and the triggering element DOM node as its second. The this context is set to the tooltip instance.
selector string false If a selector is provided, tooltip objects will be delegated to the specified targets. In practice, this is used to enable dynamic HTML content to have popovers added. See this and an informative example.
template string '<div class="tooltip" role="tooltip"><div class="arrow"></div><div class="tooltip-inner"></div></div>'

Base HTML to use when creating the tooltip.

The tooltip's title will be injected into the .tooltip-inner.

.arrow will become the tooltip's arrow.

The outermost wrapper element should have the .tooltip class.
title string | element | function ''

Default title value if title attribute isn't present.

If a function is given, it will be called with its this reference set to the element that the tooltip is attached to.
trigger string 'hover focus' How tooltip is triggered - click | hover | focus | manual. You may pass multiple triggers; separate them with a space. `manual` cannot be combined with any other trigger.
offset number | string 0 Offset of the tooltip relative to its target. For more information refer to Popper.js's offset docs.
fallbackPlacement string | array 'flip' Allow to specify which position Popper will use on fallback. For more information refer to Popper.js's behavior docs

Data attributes for individual tooltips

Options for individual tooltips can alternatively be specified through the use of data attributes, as explained above.

Methods

Asynchronous methods and transitions

All API methods are asynchronous and start a transition. They returns to the caller as soon as the transition is started but before it ends. In addition, a method call on a transitioning component will be ignored.

See our Javascript documentation for more informations.

$().tooltip(options)

Attaches a tooltip handler to an element collection.

.tooltip('show')

Reveals an element’s tooltip. Returns to the caller before the tooltip has actually been shown (i.e. before the shown.bs.tooltip event occurs). This is considered a “manual” triggering of the tooltip. Tooltips with zero-length titles are never displayed.

$('#element').tooltip('show')

.tooltip('hide')

Hides an element’s tooltip. Returns to the caller before the tooltip has actually been hidden (i.e. before the hidden.bs.tooltip event occurs). This is considered a “manual” triggering of the tooltip.

$('#element').tooltip('hide')

.tooltip('toggle')

Toggles an element’s tooltip. Returns to the caller before the tooltip has actually been shown or hidden (i.e. before the shown.bs.tooltip or hidden.bs.tooltip event occurs). This is considered a “manual” triggering of the tooltip.

$('#element').tooltip('toggle')

.tooltip('dispose')

Hides and destroys an element’s tooltip. Tooltips that use delegation (which are created using the selector option) cannot be individually destroyed on descendant trigger elements.

$('#element').tooltip('dispose')

.tooltip('enable')

Gives an element’s tooltip the ability to be shown. Tooltips are enabled by default.

$('#element').tooltip('enable')

.tooltip('disable')

Removes the ability for an element’s tooltip to be shown. The tooltip will only be able to be shown if it is re-enabled.

$('#element').tooltip('disable')

.tooltip('toggleEnabled')

Toggles the ability for an element’s tooltip to be shown or hidden.

$('#element').tooltip('toggleEnabled')

.tooltip('update')

Updates the position of an element’s tooltip.

$('#element').tooltip('update')

Events

Event Type Description
show.bs.tooltip This event fires immediately when the show instance method is called.
shown.bs.tooltip This event is fired when the tooltip has been made visible to the user (will wait for CSS transitions to complete).
hide.bs.tooltip This event is fired immediately when the hide instance method has been called.
hidden.bs.tooltip This event is fired when the tooltip has finished being hidden from the user (will wait for CSS transitions to complete).
inserted.bs.tooltip This event is fired after the show.bs.tooltip event when the tooltip template has been added to the DOM. 
$('#myTooltip').on('hidden.bs.tooltip', function () {
  // do something…
})