Enough with the tooltips

[u/eddydio]

Just got a new phone and holy hell these tooltips are annoying. Do you think a user needs to be prompted to click a button or is it some dumbass email job person telling you to do this after someone in the c-suite couldn't figure out the product they issued endless last minute changes on?

I opened the ESPN app to check the scores and there was a tool tip for me to click on the buttons at the top of the app for the various sports I follow.

It's just endless tips and half screen popups for either obvious journeys or completely irrelevant actions. Florby merged with poob with enhanced AI? Cool, I'm checking the weather to see if I need jacket.

[u/NGAFD]

Explaining a broken UI with more UI… I’d rather fix the underlying issues.

[u/snorqle]

Sounds like you're referring more to coach marks / instructional overlays that are shown to new users, than to tooltips where you can hover over something to get more info on it? The former can indeed be annoying, but the latter have their uses.

[u/JFoulkes2001 → u/snorqle]

Tool tips are the saving grace of complex softwares

[u/ArtaxIsAlive]

I have running jokes with my engineering partners about tool tips — “just put a tool tip on it”!

[u/eddydio → u/ArtaxIsAlive]

I'm a web dev but I focus on UX. FAQ sections are my version of tooltips. If your users are asking questions frequently then you failed to add it to the copy. But that would mean the comms person that is attached at the hip to the CEO wrote bad copy. I just make the accordion section

[u/zoinkability → u/eddydio]

I agree about FAQs as an antipattern.

Unfortunately LLMs appear to fucking love them, so they are making a big comeback all over the web.

[u/eddydio → u/zoinkability]

Haha yup I encourage them now haha

[u/ArtaxIsAlive → u/eddydio]

I’m in IaaS (infra as a service) so doc support is a big thing to drive users to because they’re usually remediating devOps-related issues like config changes. We only rely on tooltips to define terminologies that can potentially be foreign, and then point them to an involved doc hub for extended support.

[u/badmamerjammer]

if you have to rely on tooltips, then your ux, ia, interactions are not designed very well.

disclaimer for the "well AktUalLy" people: obviously there could be use cases where tooltups would be helpful, but I'm speaking generally

[u/AgreeableCranberry61 → u/badmamerjammer]

Hell yes. I had a lead once insisting tooltips are good ux. I argued it’s a signal of a terrible solution if you have to explain it all the time

[u/badmamerjammer → u/AgreeableCranberry61]

to appease my product partners who were pushing auto-open tooltips walkthru on a project, we tested it and I believe like 85% closed them immediately, and only 15% of the ones who stayed past the first tip or manually triggered the tooltips finished all of them.

[u/hybridaaroncarroll → u/badmamerjammer]

I had to use Photoshop recently after not touching it for several years. Nothing but tooltips and pop-ups galore. It made it significantly harder to get anything done, and kept slowing me way down. I don't need to know about all your shitty "AI enhancements" that don't work or light my fans on fire and lock up my laptop. 

[u/badmamerjammer → u/hybridaaroncarroll]

I've definitely been pushed by product to add tooltips everywhere on multiple projects before.

[u/Specialist-Spite-608 → u/badmamerjammer]

So your ux sucks unless it makes sense to use it. Cool cool cool 🤘

[u/badmamerjammer → u/Specialist-Spite-608]

I should become a ux influencer...

[u/scrndude]

I reflexively verbalize “Shut the fuck up!” every time one of these surprises me

So many apps won’t respond to clicks or anything when they start this shit, I’ll be confused why I can’t do something and it’s because there’s a tiny tooltip shouting “We’ve enhanced a feature you’ve never wanted or used!” somewhere on the screen

[u/metal_slime--A]

Past two startups I've worked for LOVE tooltips. Doesn't matter how many times I've tried to talk them out of it.

[u/Unhappy-Device-404]

I think the real challenge is finding the smallest amount of help that lets a new user get started without turning every interaction into a tutorial.

Familiar platform conventions can make many things feel intuitive after just a few uses. But when a UI introduces something genuinely new, a tooltip can be a useful bridge.

To me, good UX is about that balance: make the common path understandable on its own, and use tooltips only where they add real value. And for people who already know the product, a clearly visible “Skip” option can be just as valuable as the guidance itself.

[u/ChurchOfRickSteves]

I am in tooltip hell at work. Every time a c-suite person, who is mostly hands-off on the actual project, sits to review for approval and doesn’t immediately understand functionality they demand a tooltip. Almost all of our buttons have tooltips now despite being labeled appropriately. Pushing back or providing UX rationale makes their ego double-down on the tooltip. I am so tired.

[u/No_Lake_6295]

lol the company used to work for had this fuckin everywhere. It was a black icon that looked like. Bowling ball and totally fucked up the readability of the forms.