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 or use bootstrap.bundle.min.js / bootstrap.bundle.js which contains Popper.js in order for tooltips to work!
• If you’re building our JavaScript from source, it requires util.js.
• 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.
• Tooltips can be triggered thanks to an element inside a shadow 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:

Open example on getbootstrap.com

Hover over the buttons below to see the four tooltips directions: top, right, bottom, and left.

<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)

$('#example').tooltip({ boundary: 'window' })

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).

<!-- 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>

Disabled elements

Elements with the disabled attribute aren’t interactive, meaning users cannot focus, hover, or click them to trigger a tooltip (or popover). As a workaround, you’ll want to trigger the tooltip from a wrapper <div> or <span>, ideally made keyboard-focusable using tabindex="0", and override the pointer-events on the disabled element.

<span class="d-inline-block" tabindex="0" data-toggle="tooltip" title="Disabled tooltip">
  <button class="btn btn-primary" style="pointer-events: none;" type="button" disabled>Disabled button</button>
</span>

Options

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

Methods

$().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

$('#myTooltip').on('hidden.bs.tooltip', function () {
  // do something...
})