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Troubleshooting

Some tips on how to solve common issues with ReactTooltip.

info

Before trying these, make sure you're running the latest ReactTooltip version with

npm install react-tooltip@latest

or

yarn add react-tooltip@latest

If you can't find your problem here, make sure there isn't an open issue on GitHub already covering it. If there isn't, feel free to submit a new issue here.

The tooltip is broken/not showing up​

Make sure you've imported the default styling. You only need to do this once on your application and only if you are using a version before 5.13.0, App.jsx/App.tsx is usually a good place to do it.

import 'react-tooltip/dist/react-tooltip.css'

If you've imported the default styling and the tooltip is still not showing up when you hover on your anchor element, make sure you have content to be displayed by the tooltip.

If data-tooltip-content and data-tooltip-html are both unset (or they have empty values) on the anchor element, and also the content, render, and children props on the tooltip are unset (or have empty values), the tooltip is not shown by default.

The tooltip doesn't close​

This usually happens when you try to set the tooltip opacity via CSS. Due to the opacity being used internally to control the tooltip state, overriding it breaks functionality.

Instead, use the opacity prop, or override the --rt-opacity CSS variable. See the examples for more details.

<Tooltip opacity={1} />

or

:root {
  --rt-opacity: 1;
}

The tooltip doesn't close when using closeEvents={{ click: true }}​

Some HTML elements, such as the <svg>, can sometimes capture click events and not propagate them. If your anchor element contains an <svg> element, try setting pointer-events: none; on it.

<button data-tooltip-id="...">
  <svg className="my-svg">
    ...
  </svg>
</button>
.my-svg {
  pointer-events: none;
}

The border doesn't show for the arrow​

Simply setting the border for the tooltip through CSS will not work for the arrow.

Instead, use the border prop.

<Tooltip border="1px solid red" />

Bad performance​

If you're experiencing any kind of unexpected behavior or bad performance on your application when using ReactTooltip, here are a few things you can try.

Move <Tooltip /> on the DOM​

This is specially relevant when using components that are conditionally rendered.

Always try to keep the <Tooltip /> component rendered, so if you're having issues with a tooltip you've placed inside a component which is placed/removed from the DOM dynamically, try to move the tooltip outside of it.

We usually recommend placing the tooltip component directly inside the root component of your application (usually on App.jsx/App.tsx).

Dynamically generated anchor elements​

You should avoid needlessly using a large amount of <Tooltip /> components. One tooltip component that you use across your whole application should be good enough in most cases, but you should be fine to add a few more if you need to use different styled tooltips.

Here's a simple example on how to improve performance when using dynamically generated items.

info

Check the examples for the anchorSelect and render props for more complex use cases.

// ❌ BAD
<div className="items-container">
  {myItems.map(({ id, content, tooltip }) => (
    <div key={id} className="item" data-tooltip-id={`tooltip-${id}`}>
      {content}
      <Tooltip id={`tooltip-${id}`} content={tooltip} />
    </div>
  ))}
</div>
// ✅ GOOD
<div className="items-container">
  {
    myItems.map(({ id, content, tooltip }) => (
      <div
        key={id}
        className="item"
        data-tooltip-id="my-tooltip"
        data-tooltip-content={tooltip}
      >
        {content}
      </div>
    ))
  }
</div>
<Tooltip id="my-tooltip" />

The tooltip doesn't work when using a Shadow DOM​

ReactTooltip currently does not support Shadow DOM usage, but it is on our roadmap.

See issue #1029 and PR #1068 for more info.

Can't import the named export 'xxx' from non EcmaScript module (only default export is available)​

info

If you're running into this message on a project not using webpack or react-scripts, please submit a bug report with information about your setup.

If you're using webpack​

This problem can be fixed by adding a rule to your webpack.config.js file.

module.exports = {
  ...
  module: {
    rules: [
      {
        test: /\.mjs$/,
        include: /node_modules/,
        type: 'javascript/auto',
      }
    ]
  }
}

If you're using react-scripts​

Try upgrading to the latest react-scripts version (v5.0.1 at the time of writing).

npm i react-scripts@latest

or

yarn add react-scripts@latest

The tooltip component is undefined (#1067)​

This might be related to an issue with create-react-app not supporting .cjs files, which is the default extension for the ReactTooltip dist file (react-tooltip.min.cjs). See cra's issue #12700 for the recommended way to fix this for all of your project dependencies.

If you wish to only fix this for react-tooltip, see below.

By default, your project will be importing the react-tooltip.min.cjs file. To workaround this, you must change the ReactTooltip package.json file (not the one on the root of your project!). To do this, run the following inside your project directory:

# if you're on Windows, just download the `.patch` file manually
wget https://github.com/ReactTooltip/react-tooltip/files/12195501/react-tooltip-1067.patch
git diff react-tooltip-1067.patch

This will apply the necessary changes (which you can check out for yourself). The only problem with this approach is that reinstalling react-tooltip, or cloning your project into a new environment, means you'll have to apply the changes again. For that reason, consider the recommended solution mentioned above, or using patch-package.

Next.js TypeError: f is not a function​

This problem seems to be caused by a bug related to the SWC bundler used by Next.js. The best way to solve this is to upgrade to [email protected] or later versions.

Less ideally, if you're unable to upgrade, you can set swcMinify: false on your next.config.js file.

Next.js "use client" error​

This normally happens when you use react-tooltip inside a component that is not tagged as client component. For more info, see the Next.js docs.

To use react-tooltip on Next.js 13 without having to tag your component or page as a client component, just create a new file ReactTooltip.tsx (for this example, the file path is src/components/ReactTooltip.tsx) and place the following code inside of the created file:

caution

Avoid naming the file react-tooltip.tsx (or with whichever extension your project uses), since it may interfere with your editor's autocomplete functionality, and your bundling/compiling process.

// src/components/ReactTooltip.tsx
'use client'

export { Tooltip } from 'react-tooltip'

When importing the tooltip:

// ❌ OLD
import { Tooltip } from 'react-tooltip'
// ✅ NEW
import { Tooltip } from 'components/ReactTooltip'