Link Tooltip

Link Tooltip

Link Tooltip is a lightweight Obsidian plugin that shows where a hovered link points, in Live Preview and source mode.

A tooltip appears for any link that hides its destination behind a label: every Markdown link [label](destination) — an external URL or an internal note path — and aliased wikilinks [[target|alias]]. Bare links already show their destination as text (a raw URL, or an unaliased [[Note]]), so they get no tooltip.

Obsidian already shows native browser-style tooltips for real <a href> elements in Reading mode, so Reading mode is intentionally out of scope. This plugin targets the editor, where links are rendered by CodeMirror as spans and the destination is not available as an href attribute.

What it does

• Registers a CodeMirror 6 extension for editor views.
• Detects hover on rendered Markdown links and wikilinks in Live Preview and source mode.
• Recovers the hovered link's destination from CodeMirror's syntax tree (shown as its literal target for internal links), not from hidden DOM spans.
• Shows the destination in a small floating tooltip near the cursor.
• Persists its settings with Obsidian's loadData() / saveData() plugin data APIs.

Settings

• Show tooltips for external links — reveal the destination URL of a hovered external link. On by default.
• Show tooltips for internal links — reveal the target of a hovered internal link or aliased wikilink. On by default.
• Debug logging — enable only while troubleshooting hover detection.

Install into a vault

For local testing, use the deploy script. It builds the plugin, creates the plugin folder if needed, and copies main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css.

npm install
npm run deploy -- --vault "/path/to/Vault"

You can also target the plugin folder directly:

npm run deploy -- --plugin-dir "/path/to/Vault/.obsidian/plugins/link-tooltip"

For repeated local deploys, set OBSIDIAN_VAULT or OBSIDIAN_PLUGIN_DIR in your shell and run npm run deploy.

After deploying, restart Obsidian or reload plugins, then enable Link Tooltip in Obsidian's Community plugins settings.

Troubleshooting

Open Obsidian's developer console with Ctrl+Shift+I on Windows/Linux or Cmd+Option+I on macOS, then check the Console tab.

If the plugin enabled but hover display is not working:

1. Open Settings -> Community plugins -> Link Tooltip.
2. Enable Debug logging.
3. Hover a Markdown link or aliased wikilink in Live Preview or source mode.
4. Filter the console for link-tooltip.

When debug logging is enabled, Obsidian should show a small notice and the console should show normal console.log entries prefixed with [link-tooltip].

The hover diagnostics include the hovered position and the parsed link (its range, destination, kind, and whether it is aliased).

Manual installation

1. Clone or download this repository.
2. Run npm install.
3. Run npm run build.
4. Create a folder named link-tooltip inside your vault's .obsidian/plugins/ directory.
5. Copy main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css into .obsidian/plugins/link-tooltip/.
6. Restart Obsidian or reload plugins.
7. Enable Link Tooltip in Obsidian's Community plugins settings.

Community plugins

Install directly from Obsidian:

1. Open Settings → Community plugins.
2. Make sure Safe mode is off, then click Browse.
3. Search for Link Tooltip and click Install.
4. Enable the plugin.

BRAT (pre-release)

To test a pre-release build with BRAT:

1. Install and enable the BRAT plugin.
2. Run BRAT: Add a beta plugin for testing.
3. Enter brunoribeiro2k/obsidian-link-tooltip.
4. Enable Link Tooltip in Community plugins settings.

Development

Install dependencies once with npm install, then:

• npm run dev — esbuild in watch mode (rebuilds main.js on change, inline sourcemaps).
• npm run build — the done-gate: typecheck (tsc), lint (eslint), then the production bundle.
• npm run lint — ESLint on its own.
• npm test — the node --test unit tests (isExternalUrl).
• npm run setup-vault — build, then generate the gitignored test-vault/ from the committed fixtures with the plugin deployed and enabled. Open it in Obsidian to verify hover detection, which has no automated coverage (it needs a live editor).
• npm run deploy -- --vault "/path/to/Vault" — build and copy the plugin into a vault for local testing.

Work on a feature branch (or directly on a release branch) and open PRs against master. CI runs lint, build, and tests on every pull request.

Releasing

Releases are PR-driven, and tagging plus the GitHub release draft are automated — you only prepare the version bump.

1. From a clean working tree, run npm run release -- <patch|minor|major>. This bumps the version (manifest.json, package.json, versions.json) without creating a git tag, lands it on a release/<version> branch, commits, pushes, and opens a PR to master. If you've already created a release branch for this version with a descriptive suffix (e.g. release/1.0.0-first-final), run the command from that branch and it's kept as-is rather than switched to the bare release/<version>.
2. Review and merge the PR into master.
3. On that merge, the release workflow detects the new version, builds, attests build provenance, pushes the matching tag (no v prefix), and creates a draft GitHub release with main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css attached. It links the draft from a comment on the merge commit and from the workflow run summary.
4. Review the draft's notes and publish it. Publishing makes the assets downloadable; the Obsidian community directory picks up the new version on its next review.

The workflow is the sole creator of git tags (so a tag always points at the merged master commit), which is why npm version is configured never to tag here (git-tag-version=false in .npmrc).