Replace shinyBS popovers with Bootstrap tooltips

[Copilot]

shinyBS popovers are unmaintained and breaking on modern browsers. This replaces them with a Bootstrap tooltip approach that keeps the same “info” affordance and HTML content support.

• UI tooltip wiring
  • Swap shinyBS::popify() + bsButton() for tooltip-enabled span() and initialize tooltips via tags$script.
• Styling and attribution
  • Add tooltip CSS/JS (with attribution per StackOverflow source) and keep existing visual affordances.
• Dependency/docs cleanup
  • Drop shinyBS from Imports and update documentation/NEWS language to “tooltips”.

Example tooltip markup (generated UI):

span(
  `data-toggle` = "tooltip", `data-placement` = "right", `data-html` = "true",
  title = "A tooltip <i>with HTML</i>",
  icon("info-circle")
)

Warning

Firewall rules blocked me from connecting to one or more addresses (expand for details)

I tried to connect to the following addresses, but was blocked by firewall rules:

• canonical-bos01.cdn.snapcraftcontent.com
  • Triggering command: /usr/lib/snapd/snapd /usr/lib/snapd/snapd -r-cran-fit.mode--norc eb dpkg-deb --co�� 1-3-1_all.deb /var/lib/dpkg/tmr-cran-plotly /usr/bin/dpkg-spr-cran-dt hics_0.5-1-1_allbash /var/lib/dpkg/tm--norc /usr/bin/dpkg-sp--noprofile dpkg-split -Qao�� -r-cran-spdata_2.3.0-1_all.deb .20.0-2ubuntu0.1_amd64.deb eb b -10-1_amd64.deb eb rm (dns block)
• cloud.r-project.org
  • Triggering command: /usr/lib/R/bin/exec/R /usr/lib/R/bin/exec/R --no-echo --no-restore -e install.packages(c('shiny','bslib','testthat','jsonlite'),~+~repos='REDACTED',~+~lib='/home/REDACTED/work/metaUI/Rlibs') (dns block)
  • Triggering command: /usr/lib/R/bin/exec/R /usr/lib/R/bin/exec/R --no-echo --no-restore -e options(repos='REDACTED');~+~install.packages('shinyWidgets',~+~lib='/home/REDACTED/work/metaUI/Rlibs') -r-cran-rann_2.6.1-1build2_amd64.deb p.ci b -r-cran-ggrepel_/usr/bin/dpkg p.ci b tar -x .random_3.2-2-1_--print-foreign-architectures -r-cran-rhpcblasctl_0.23-42-1_amd64.deb /usr/sbin/dpkg-deb md64.deb -r-cran-stabledi-Qao /usr/sbin/dpkg-d/var/lib/dpkg/reassemble.deb dpkg-deb (dns block)
• cran.r-project.org
  • Triggering command: /usr/lib/R/bin/exec/R /usr/lib/R/bin/exec/R --no-echo --no-restore -e options(repos='REDACTED');~+~install.packages('shinyWidgets',~+~lib='/home/REDACTED/work/metaUI/Rlibs') (dns block)
• esm.ubuntu.com
  • Triggering command: /usr/lib/apt/methods/https /usr/lib/apt/methods/https -type f -cmin +24 -delete (dns block)

If you need me to access, download, or install something from one of these locations, you can either:

• Configure Actions setup steps to set up my environment, which run before the firewall is enabled
• Add the appropriate URLs or hosts to the custom allowlist in this repository's Copilot coding agent settings (admins only)

Original prompt

---

This section details on the original issue you should resolve

<issue_title>Move away from shinyBS for popups</issue_title>
<issue_description>shinyBS is no longer maintained and increasingly breaking with modern browsers - so we should switch to something else.

ChatGPT suggests https://rinterface.github.io/bs4Dash/ which looks v powerful but also like it would require a complete rewrite of the app - or to create custom javascript code like the following.

    tags$script(
      '$(document).ready(function(){
          $("#myButton").popover({
            title: "Popover title",
            content: "Here is the popover content.",
            trigger: "hover"
          });
       });'
    )
  ),
  actionButton("myButton", "Hover over me")

</issue_description>

Comments on the Issue (you are @copilot in this section)

@LukasWallrich This stackoverflow solution looks good. If we use it, make sure to keep attribution.

# Source - https://stackoverflow.com/a/73325271
# Posted by Stéphane Laurent
# Retrieved 2026-02-01, License - CC BY-SA 4.0

library(shiny)
library(bslib)

css <- '
.tooltip {
  pointer-events: none;
}
.tooltip > .tooltip-inner {
  pointer-events: none;
  background-color: #73AD21;
  color: #FFFFFF;
  border: 1px solid green;
  padding: 10px;
  font-size: 25px;
  font-style: italic;
  text-align: justify;
  margin-left: 0;
  max-width: 1000px;
}
.tooltip > .arrow::before {
  border-right-color: #73AD21;
}
'

js <- "
$(function () {
  $('[data-toggle=tooltip]').tooltip()
})
"

shinyApp(
  server = function(input,output,session){},
  ui = fluidPage(
    theme = bs_theme(version = 4),
    tags$head(
      tags$style(HTML(css)),
      tags$script(HTML(js))
    ),
    br(),
    span(
      "Example",
      span(
        `data-toggle` = "tooltip", `data-placement` = "right",
        title = "A tooltip",
        icon("info-circle")
      )
    )
  )
)

```</body></comment_new>
</comments>

• Fixes Move away from shinyBS for popups #31

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