A note on footnotes

• 19 February 2026

I like writing in obsidian because to me, it's the most capable editor out there. It can do so so much with markdown, and the extensive plugin support is amazing. However, many of the base features will do just about anything anyone needs. By simply typing the markdown syntax for a footnote, you get the option to add one ^[1].

Getting these to work in Eleventy is a little more complex, but fortunately for us, this is the Internet®, and someone has already figured it out. For the sake of posterity and preservation, I'll put a short version here.

1. Install the markdown-it-footnotes plugin (I use pnpm, but the syntax is the same for npm)

pnpm install markdown-it-footnote --save

2. Import the library in your eleventyconfig.js — this goes at the top of your file

import footnote_plugin from 'markdown-it-footnote';

3. Put this line under export default async function(eleventyConfig) { in your config file

eleventyConfig.amendLibrary("md", (mdLib) => mdLib.use(footnote_plugin));

That's it! Super simple. Now you can have all the footnotes you want ^[2].