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Thetooltip, also known asinfotip orhint, is a commongraphical user interface (GUI) element in which, whenhovering over a screen element or component, a text box displays information about that element, such as a description of a button's function, what an abbreviation stands for, or the exact absolutetime stamp over a relative time ("… ago"). In common practice, the tooltip is displayed continuously as long as the user hovers over the element or the text box provided by the tool.[1] It is sometimes possible for the mouse to hover within the text box provided to activate a nested tooltip, and this can continue to any depth, often with multiple text boxes overlapped.
On desktop, it is used in conjunction with acursor, usually apointer, whereby the tooltip appears when a userhovers the pointer over an item without clicking it.[2][3]
On touch-screen devices, a tooltip is displayed upon long-pressing—i.e., tapping and holding—an element.[1] Some smartphones havealternative input methods such as astylus, which can show tooltips when hovering above the screen.
A common variant of tooltips, especially in older software, is displaying a description of the tool in astatus bar.[citation needed]Microsoft's tooltips feature found in itsend-user documentation is namedScreenTips.[4]Apple's tooltips feature found in itsdeveloper documentation is namedhelp tags.[5] TheClassic Mac OS uses a tooltips feature, though in a slightly different way, known asballoon help.[6] Some software and applications, such asGIMP, provide an option for users to turn off some or all tooltips. However, such options are left to the discretion of the developer, and are often not implemented.[citation needed]
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The termtooltip originally came from older Microsoft applications (e.g.Microsoft Word 95). These applications would havetoolbars wherein, when moving the mouse over the Toolbar icons, displayed a short description of the function of the tool in the toolbar. More recently, these tooltips are used in various parts of an interface, not only on toolbars.
CSS,HTML, andJavaScript also other coding systems allow web designers to create customized tooltips.[7]
Demonstrations of tooltip usage are prevalent on web pages. Many graphicalweb browsers display thetitle attribute of anHTMLelement as a tooltip when a user hovers the pointer over that element; in such a browser, when hovering over Wikipedia images and hyperlinks a tooltip will appear.[7]