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Popovers

Documentation and examples for adding Bootstrap popovers, like those found in iOS, to any element on your site.

Overview

Things to know when using the popover plugin:

• Popovers rely on the third party library Popper for positioning. You must include popper.min.js before bootstrap.js, or use one bootstrap.bundle.min.js which contains Popper.
• Popovers require the popover plugin as a dependency.
• Popovers are opt-in for performance reasons, so you must initialize them yourself.
• Zero-length title and content values will never show a popover.
• Specify container: 'body' to avoid rendering problems in more complex components (like our input groups, button groups, etc).
• Triggering popovers on hidden elements will not work.
• Popovers for .disabled or disabled elements must be triggered on a wrapper element.
• When triggered from anchors that wrap across multiple lines, popovers will be centered between the anchors’ overall width. Use .text-nowrap on your <a>s to avoid this behavior.
• Popovers must be hidden before their corresponding elements have been removed from the DOM.
• Popovers can be triggered thanks to an element inside a shadow DOM.

By default, this component uses the built-in content sanitizer, which strips out any HTML elements that are not explicitly allowed. See the sanitizer section in our JavaScript documentation for more details.

The animation effect of this component is dependent on the prefers-reduced-motion media query. See the reduced motion section of our accessibility documentation.

Keep reading to see how popovers work with some examples.

Examples

Enable popovers

As mentioned above, you must initialize popovers before they can be used. One way to initialize all popovers on a page would be to select them by their data-bs-toggle attribute, like so:

const popoverTriggerList = document.querySelectorAll('[data-bs-toggle="popover"]')
const popoverList = [...popoverTriggerList].map(popoverTriggerEl => new bootstrap.Popover(popoverTriggerEl))

Live demo

We use JavaScript similar to the snippet above to render the following live popover. Titles are set via data-bs-title and body content is set via data-bs-content.

Feel free to use either title or data-bs-title in your HTML. When title is used, Popper will replace it automatically with data-bs-title when the element is rendered.

html

<button type="button" class="btn btn-lg btn-danger" data-bs-toggle="popover" data-bs-title="Popover title" data-bs-content="And here's some amazing content. It's very engaging. Right?">Click to toggle popover</button>

Four directions

Four options are available: top, right, bottom, and left. Directions are mirrored when using Bootstrap in RTL. Set data-bs-placement to change the direction.

html

<button type="button" class="btn btn-secondary" data-bs-container="body" data-bs-toggle="popover" data-bs-placement="top" data-bs-content="Top popover">
  Popover on top
</button>
<button type="button" class="btn btn-secondary" data-bs-container="body" data-bs-toggle="popover" data-bs-placement="right" data-bs-content="Right popover">
  Popover on right
</button>
<button type="button" class="btn btn-secondary" data-bs-container="body" data-bs-toggle="popover" data-bs-placement="bottom" data-bs-content="Bottom popover">
  Popover on bottom
</button>
<button type="button" class="btn btn-secondary" data-bs-container="body" data-bs-toggle="popover" data-bs-placement="left" data-bs-content="Left popover">
  Popover on left
</button>

Custom container

When you have some styles on a parent element that interfere with a popover, you’ll want to specify a custom container so that the popover’s HTML appears within that element instead. This is common in responsive tables, input groups, and the like.

const popover = new bootstrap.Popover('.example-popover', {
  container: 'body'
})

Another situation where you’ll want to set an explicit custom container are popovers inside a modal dialog, to make sure that the popover itself is appended to the modal. This is particularly important for popovers that contain interactive elements – modal dialogs will trap focus, so unless the popover is a child element of the modal, users won’t be able to focus or activate these interactive elements.

const popover = new bootstrap.Popover('.example-popover', {
  container: '.modal-body'
})

Custom popovers

Added in v5.2.0

You can customize the appearance of popovers using CSS variables. We set a custom class with data-bs-custom-class="custom-popover" to scope our custom appearance and use it to override some of the local CSS variables.

.custom-popover {
  --bs-popover-max-width: 200px;
  --bs-popover-border-color: var(--bs-primary);
  --bs-popover-header-bg: var(--bs-primary);
  --bs-popover-header-color: var(--bs-white);
  --bs-popover-body-padding-x: 1rem;
  --bs-popover-body-padding-y: .5rem;
}

html

<button type="button" class="btn btn-secondary"
        data-bs-toggle="popover" data-bs-placement="right"
        data-bs-custom-class="custom-popover"
        data-bs-title="Custom popover"
        data-bs-content="This popover is themed via CSS variables.">
  Custom popover
</button>

Dismiss on next click

Use the focus trigger to dismiss popovers on the user’s next click of a different element than the toggle element.

Specific markup required for dismiss-on-next-click

For proper cross-browser and cross-platform behavior, you must use the <a> tag, not the <button> tag, and you also must include a tabindex attribute.

html

<a tabindex="0" class="btn btn-lg btn-danger" role="button" data-bs-toggle="popover" data-bs-trigger="focus" data-bs-title="Dismissible popover" data-bs-content="And here's some amazing content. It's very engaging. Right?">Dismissible popover</a>

const popover = new bootstrap.Popover('.popover-dismiss', {
  trigger: 'focus'
})

Disabled elements

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

For disabled popover triggers, you may also prefer data-bs-trigger="hover focus" so that the popover appears as immediate visual feedback to your users as they may not expect to click on a disabled element.

html

<span class="d-inline-block" tabindex="0" data-bs-toggle="popover" data-bs-trigger="hover focus" data-bs-content="Disabled popover">
  <button class="btn btn-primary" type="button" disabled>Disabled button</button>
</span>

CSS

Variables

Added in v5.2.0

As part of Bootstrap’s evolving CSS variables approach, popovers now use local CSS variables on .popover for enhanced real-time customization. Values for the CSS variables are set via Sass, so Sass customization is still supported, too.

  --#{$prefix}popover-zindex: #{$zindex-popover};
  --#{$prefix}popover-max-width: #{$popover-max-width};
  @include rfs($popover-font-size, --#{$prefix}popover-font-size);
  --#{$prefix}popover-bg: #{$popover-bg};
  --#{$prefix}popover-border-width: #{$popover-border-width};
  --#{$prefix}popover-border-color: #{$popover-border-color};
  --#{$prefix}popover-border-radius: #{$popover-border-radius};
  --#{$prefix}popover-inner-border-radius: #{$popover-inner-border-radius};
  --#{$prefix}popover-box-shadow: #{$popover-box-shadow};
  --#{$prefix}popover-header-padding-x: #{$popover-header-padding-x};
  --#{$prefix}popover-header-padding-y: #{$popover-header-padding-y};
  @include rfs($popover-header-font-size, --#{$prefix}popover-header-font-size);
  --#{$prefix}popover-header-color: #{$popover-header-color};
  --#{$prefix}popover-header-bg: #{$popover-header-bg};
  --#{$prefix}popover-body-padding-x: #{$popover-body-padding-x};
  --#{$prefix}popover-body-padding-y: #{$popover-body-padding-y};
  --#{$prefix}popover-body-color: #{$popover-body-color};
  --#{$prefix}popover-arrow-width: #{$popover-arrow-width};
  --#{$prefix}popover-arrow-height: #{$popover-arrow-height};
  --#{$prefix}popover-arrow-border: var(--#{$prefix}popover-border-color);

Sass variables

$popover-font-size:                 $font-size-sm;
$popover-bg:                        $white;
$popover-max-width:                 276px;
$popover-border-width:              $border-width;
$popover-border-color:              var(--#{$prefix}border-color-translucent);
$popover-border-radius:             $border-radius-lg;
$popover-inner-border-radius:       subtract($popover-border-radius, $popover-border-width);
$popover-box-shadow:                $box-shadow;
$popover-header-font-size:          $font-size-base;
$popover-header-bg:                 shade-color($popover-bg, 6%);
$popover-header-color:              $headings-color;
$popover-header-padding-y:          .5rem;
$popover-header-padding-x:          $spacer;
$popover-body-color:                $body-color;
$popover-body-padding-y:            $spacer;
$popover-body-padding-x:            $spacer;
$popover-arrow-width:               1rem;
$popover-arrow-height:              .5rem;

Usage

Enable popovers via JavaScript:

const exampleEl = document.getElementById('example')
const popover = new bootstrap.Popover(exampleEl, options)

Making popovers work for keyboard and assistive technology users

To allow keyboard users to activate your popovers, you should only add them 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, and most assistive technologies currently do not announce the popover’s content in this situation. Additionally, do not rely solely on hover as the trigger for your popovers, as this will make them impossible to trigger for keyboard users.

While you can insert rich, structured HTML in popovers with the html option, we strongly recommend that you avoid adding an excessive amount of content. The way popovers currently work is that, once displayed, their content is tied to the trigger element with the aria-describedby attribute. As a result, the entirety of the popover’s content will be announced to assistive technology users as one long, uninterrupted stream.

Additionally, while it is possible to also include interactive controls (such as form elements or links) in your popover (by adding these elements to the allowList of allowed attributes and tags), be aware that currently the popover does not manage keyboard focus order. When a keyboard user opens a popover, focus remains on the triggering element, and as the popover usually does not immediately follow the trigger in the document’s structure, there is no guarantee that moving forward/pressing TAB will move a keyboard user into the popover itself. In short, simply adding interactive controls to a popover is likely to make these controls unreachable/unusable for keyboard users and users of assistive technologies, or at the very least make for an illogical overall focus order. In these cases, consider using a modal dialog instead.

Options

As options can be passed via data attributes or JavaScript, you can append an option name to data-bs-, as in data-bs-animation="{value}". Make sure to change the case type of the option name from “camelCase” to “kebab-case” when passing the options via data attributes. For example, use data-bs-custom-class="beautifier" instead of data-bs-customClass="beautifier".

As of Bootstrap 5.2.0, all components support an experimental reserved data attribute data-bs-config that can house simple component configuration as a JSON string. When an element has data-bs-config='{"delay":0, "title":123}' and data-bs-title="456" attributes, the final title value will be 456 and the separate data attributes will override values given on data-bs-config. In addition, existing data attributes are able to house JSON values like data-bs-delay='{"show":0,"hide":150}'.

Note that for security reasons the sanitize, sanitizeFn, and allowList options cannot be supplied using data attributes.

Data attributes for individual popovers

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

Using function with popperConfig

const popover = new bootstrap.Popover(element, {
  popperConfig(defaultBsPopperConfig) {
    // const newPopperConfig = {...}
    // use defaultBsPopperConfig if needed...
    // return newPopperConfig
  }
})

Methods

Asynchronous methods and transitions

All API methods are asynchronous and start a transition. They return 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 information.

// getOrCreateInstance example
const popover = bootstrap.Popover.getOrCreateInstance('#example') // Returns a Bootstrap popover instance
// setContent example
myPopover.setContent({
  '.popover-header': 'another title',
  '.popover-body': 'another content'
})

The setContent method accepts an object argument, where each property-key is a valid string selector within the popover template, and each related property-value can be string | element | function | null

Events

const myPopoverTrigger = document.getElementById('myPopover')
myPopoverTrigger.addEventListener('hidden.bs.popover', () => {
  // do something...
})