Products · Pattern or everyday thing
tooltips
Raised as a usability problem by 14 people on Hacker News over 12 years (2015–2026), in 12 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Tooltips are invisible until hovered and absent on touch inputUnreviewed
20152026- Tooltips are still broken on touchscreens even with the delay fix2026-08-26
- Tooltips pop up mid-action and get in the way of what the user is doing2026-08-25
- Tooltips were removed because designers couldn't make them work on mobile2026-05-05
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 14 complaints
- Tooltips are still broken on touchscreens even with the delay fix2026-08-26
- Tooltips pop up mid-action and get in the way of what the user is doing2026-08-25
- Tooltips were removed because designers couldn't make them work on mobile2026-05-05
- Tooltips appear late, need mouse wiggling, and won't go away2024-01-28
- Native tooltips only show plain text, insufficient for international content2024-01-09
- Users don't know tooltips exist, must hover and wait, and can't copy their text2023-10-10
- Unclear that text is hoverable, so users may not know more information exists2021-11-30
- Buttons are confusing, so users rely on long-press tooltips to learn them2021-11-28
- Tooltips are invisible until hovered and absent on touch input2021-08-21
- Popup flyovers cover what the user is focused on and distract them2020-02-28
- Users can't discover tooltips, trigger them accidentally, and must hunt for hidden ones2019-12-12
- Tooltips cannot be reached on touchscreens because there is no hover2019-08-29
- Unrequested tooltips block the content users want and cannot be brought back2019-08-29
- Tooltips either take forever to appear or instantly obstruct the view of tools2015-12-19