Motion & interaction
Subsequent tooltips are instant
The first tooltip can wait to avoid accidents. Once a tooltip is open, adjacent tooltips should appear immediately.
one wait, then instant — the toolbar feels learned
300ms every time — the toolbar never trusts you
First tooltip 300ms, then 0ms
Every tooltip 300ms
How to apply it
- 1
Skip the delay for any tooltip triggered shortly after another.
- 2
Keep a short shared window, roughly 1 to 1.5 seconds, after the last tooltip closes before resetting to first-open behavior.
- 3
Reserve the initial delay only for the very first tooltip in a session.
- 4
Test moving quickly across a toolbar to confirm no per-item delay reappears.
Why it works
The first tooltip in a session can carry a short delay to avoid firing on accidental hover, but once a user is already exploring, skipping that delay for adjacent tooltips respects the established intent and keeps a toolbar feeling continuous rather than stuttering per item.
What breaks
Every toolbar icon re-imposing the same hover delay makes scanning a row of tools feel like restarting a wait each time, so users abandon hover exploration and hunt for labels another way.
Review questions
- 1
Does the first tooltip in a session wait briefly before appearing?
- 2
Do adjacent tooltips appear instantly once you're already hovering the toolbar?
- 3
Does every toolbar item impose its own separate hover delay?