Better Footnote Plugin stopped working

What I’m trying to do

The Better Footnote Plugin by AidenLx (GitHub - aidenlx/better-fn: Footnote hover preview for Obsidian.md) stopped working for me after the latest Obsidian-Update (current version now v1.5.8 on a Mac 10.15.1). While in reading mode, the popover does not appear any more. It is the same for inline-footnotes (e.g. [1]) and reference-footnotes. I cannot even click on the footnotes any more, while the Plugin is turned on.

It might have to do with the required API-Feature (see Compatibility in GitHub - aidenlx/better-fn: Footnote hover preview for Obsidian.md). Does anybody know?

Are there alternatives? What can I do? Does anyone else have that problem? This is one of the most essential plugins for me…

Things I have tried

Restarting Obsidian, restarting Mac. Turning every Plugin but Better Footnote-Plugin off. Check settings of Better Footnote Plugin.


  1. Footnote ↩︎

I’d post an issue on their GitHub page as well (if you haven’t yet).

Thanks, just did that :slight_smile: Does it work for you, though?

I found the solution!

If somebody else encounters the same problems, this was mine:
By accident, I embedded a footnote in a footnote in a note (e.g. ^[This is my footnote ^[This was the footnote in the footnote.] This is the other footnote again.] (Let’s call this note the broken note.)

This broke the Better-Footnote plugin in my vault and strange stuff happened:

  • It stopped working completely for the broken note.
  • For some reason the plugin did work on some notes after this, on others it did not.
  • Sometimes, the plugin showed me footnotes of some random note A in the popover of the footnotes of some other note B. (Not necessarily the broken note.) This was especially confusing.

After eliminating the footnote inside the footnote in the broken note, the plugin seems to work again in every note. My workflow is saved :partying_face:

Note to myself: Always test the plugin in a new vault :woman_facepalming:

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