How to add footnotes in WordPress

There have been plugins for adding footnotes in WordPress for as long as there have been WordPress plugins, but they have often been difficult to use and looked out of place when viewing single posts. In 2023, we finally got an official Footnotes block as part of WordPress 6.3. It can be difficult to find if you haven’t used it before, though. Follow the steps below to get started.

1. First, place your marker where you want to insert a footnote. You can add footnotes pretty much anywhere you can edit text in the WordPress block editor.
2. You can find the Footnote button in the toolbar that appears above the block you’re currently editing. Try moving your cursor on top of the block if it doesn’t appear at first. Find the More button with the downward facing chevron next to the Link button, click it, and then click on the Footnote button in the list. The footnote will appear where you have the marker, like this.¹
3. When you add the footnote, WordPress will also add a Footnotes block at the bottom of the post. Add the text you want to add to your first footnote in the Footnotes block. When visitors click the footnote number, they’ll be scrolled down to the list of footnotes at the bottom of the page. Each footnote in the Footnotes block also has a ↩︎ link next to it. Clicking it will take the visitor back to the footnotes position in the content.
4. Repeat steps 1 through 3 for all of the footnotes you want to add.

If you want to remove your footnotes, you’ll have to go through the post and remove each footnote manually, and then remove the Footnotes block.

Footnotes are supported by both posts and pages, and most custom post types (like the ones added by themes and plugins) should support them as well, as long as they support the block-based content editor. If you’re editing a custom post type and can’t see the Footnote button in the toolbar, it’s possible that the custom post type doesn’t support all of the features required for the Footnotes block to work.

Psst! If you are a developer and have registered the post type yourself, you need to make sure that the supports parameter includes editor, custom-fields, and revisions.

1. This is a footnote! ↩︎