Hoverswap
Swaps the content of a tag with the content of its title when the user hovers over it.
Consider an alternative
Hoverswap shows warning signs in 2026 — compare the alternatives below before installing. It runs on 10+ sites and was last updated 15 years ago, and scores 23/100 on our health check.
- Small user base (10+ active installs)
- Very few reviews so far
- No update in 14 years
- Only tested up to WordPress 3.3 (latest is 7.1)
How does it stack up?
Side-by-side on installs, updates, ratings & supportDaily downloads
Download spikes usually follow a new release — each site that auto-updates counts as a download.
Rankings
Where Hoverswap stands todayWordPress.org search rankings
Live position in the plugin search, top 100| Keyword | Position |
|---|---|
| hover | >100 |
| swap | >100 |
| text | >100 |
| title | >100 |
Version adoption
Share of active sites per release.
About Hoverswap
From the official readme · v1.0Description
On my language-learning blog, I have a feature that shows a translation inline by swapping out text when the mouse rolls over it. It’s very handy, and it occurred to me that I should make it a plugin, so other people can use it too!
Hoverswap allows you to create swapping elements, whose content is swapped for its title when the user hovers over them.
Excellent for foreign language learning and translation web sites.
Use
Version 1.0 has no configuration. That will be added later.
For now, in order to use the plugin, you create an EM tag containing the text you want to be active, and then you put the text for its hover state into its title attribue.
Then, to ensure that only the text you WANT to be swapped gets swapped, you must wrap that in an element of the class “translate”.
One example implementation would be create the following unordered list:
<UL class=”translate”>
<LI><EM title=”How are you?”>Como estas?</EM></LI>
</UL>
Features
- Add the “translate” class to a containing element, such as a blockquote or a ul tag. Then, any em tags with a title attribute will automatically swap their content for the title when you move the mouse over them.
Planned features:
- Allow any tag or classname to be specified as the containing element.
- Allow any tag or classname to be specified as the translate element.
Installation
- Download the Hoverswap zip file.
- Extract the files to your WordPress plugins directory.
- Activate the plugin via the WordPress Plugins tab.
For developers
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Best Hoverswap alternatives
All hover plugins →FAQ
Hoverswap: quick answers
Straight answers, pulled from live WordPress.org data.
Live data from WordPress.org · checked Sep 28, 2026
Is Hoverswap free?
Yes. Hoverswap is free to download and use from the official WordPress.org plugin directory.
Is Hoverswap safe to use in 2026?
Hoverswap shows warning signs in 2026 — compare the alternatives below before installing. It runs on 10+ sites and was last updated 15 years ago, and scores 23/100 on our health check.
How many websites use Hoverswap?
Hoverswap is active on 10+ WordPress websites and has been downloaded 2,234 times since it launched in October 2010. It was downloaded 41 times in the last 30 days.
Does Hoverswap work with WordPress 7.1?
Hoverswap is officially tested up to WordPress 3.3.2, while the latest release is 7.1.2. It may still work, but try it on a staging site first.
When was Hoverswap last updated?
The latest version, 1.0, was released on January 31, 2012 (15 years ago).
Who makes Hoverswap?
Hoverswap is developed and maintained by Randy Hunt.
What are the best alternatives to Hoverswap?
The most popular alternatives to Hoverswap are Easy Footnotes (8K+ installs), Extensions for Leaflet Map (3K+ installs) and Secondary Product Image for… (2K+ installs).
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