WPF Standard Control Demo App › ToolTip
ToolTip Overlays
A ToolTip appears after the pointer rests on an element, or when the element gets the keyboard focus. Its timing and position are set through the ToolTipService attached properties.
When a tooltip opens, and when it closes
Setting ToolTip="text" on an element is enough; WPF wraps the string in a ToolTip when it opens. It does so each time: opening the same string tooltip twice gave two different ToolTip instances.
The timing is set through the ToolTipService attached properties, and the defaults are not the numbers often quoted. InitialShowDelay, the wait before the tooltip opens, was 1000 ms. BetweenShowDelay, the time after one tooltip closes during which the next opens without the initial delay, was 100 ms. ShowDuration was Int32.MaxValue, so a tooltip does not close by itself while the pointer stays. With ShowDuration="1000", it was closed 2.5 seconds after it opened, with the pointer still on the button.
With a real mouse, a tooltip with InitialShowDelay 500 opened after about 550 to 700 ms across runs (600 ms in the run in the table below) and one with 2000 after about 2050 ms.
Keyboard focus and disabled elements
Keyboard users get tooltips too. When a real Tab key moved the focus to a button, with the mouse pointer resting on another button, its tooltip opened with ShowsToolTipOnKeyboardFocus unset (the default, null) or True, and not with False. Leave it on.
A disabled element shows no tooltip unless ShowOnDisabled is True: over a disabled button, the tooltip did not open, and with ShowOnDisabled="True" it opened after about 350 ms (the buttons measured for this had InitialShowDelay set to 300, to shorten the wait). Set it when the tooltip should explain why a control is disabled.
Where it appears
Placement defaults to Mouse: the tooltip’s top-left was 17 below the pointer. With Bottom, it was at the bottom-left corner of the button, 30 below its top, wherever the pointer was, so use Bottom for a position that does not depend on the pointer. HorizontalOffset and VerticalOffset shift it: with HorizontalOffset 50, the tooltip moved from (0, 30) to (50, 30) from the button’s corner.
PlacementTarget and PlacementRectangle are the element, or a rectangle, that the placement is measured from. The Popup page measures the same properties on a Popup.
The default of the attached HasDropShadow, read on a button, was False. Whether a shadow is actually drawn was not measured.
| case | measured |
|---|---|
| defaults: InitialShowDelay / ShowDuration / BetweenShowDelay | 1000 / 2147483647 / 100 |
| defaults: Placement / ShowsToolTipOnKeyboardFocus / ShowOnDisabled / HasDropShadow | Mouse / null / False / False |
| real mouse over a button: InitialShowDelay 500 / 2000 | opened after 600 ms / opened after 2050 ms |
| ShowDuration=1000, pointer kept on the button: open 2.5 s later | False |
| string ToolTip opened twice: same ToolTip instance | False |
| disabled button: ShowOnDisabled False / True | did not open / opened after 350 ms |
| Placement=Bottom: tooltip from the button's top-left / from the pointer | (0, 30) / (-80, 15) |
| Bottom, HorizontalOffset 50: tooltip from the button's top-left / from the pointer | (50, 30) / (-30, 15) |
| Placement=Mouse (default): tooltip from the button's top-left / from the pointer | (80, 32) / (0, 17) |
| real Tab (mouse on the other button), OnKeyboardFocus=True: focused / mouse over / opened | True / False / True |
| real Tab (mouse on the other button), OnKeyboardFocus=False: focused / mouse over / opened | True / False / False |
| real Tab (mouse on the other button), OnKeyboardFocus=null: focused / mouse over / opened | True / False / True |
Defaults, timing, reuse, disabled elements, placement, and keyboard focus. Measured on .NET 10 / Windows 11.
Trying it in the demo app
The ToolTip page of the demo app has sections for the placement, with a button for each of eleven Placement values, and for its offsets, set from sliders on a button with Placement="Bottom", and its target and rectangle. It also has sections for the keyboard (True and False), the drop shadow, switched with a check box, the three delays, whose sliders start at 500 (InitialShowDelay), 5000 (ShowDuration), and 2000 (BetweenShowDelay), and the width, height, colors, border, padding, and content alignment of the tooltip. The “Show Code” link under each section displays its XAML. The following XAML is the InitialShowDelay section (ToolTipUsageControl.xaml), with the styles and the surrounding GroupBoxes left out and the namespace declarations added:
<StackPanel xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml">
<Slider x:Name="ValueInitialShowDelaySlider" Maximum="5000" Minimum="0" Value="500" />
<Button x:Name="InitialShowDelayToolTipButton"
Content="Show ToolTip on hover."
ToolTip="Delayed ToolTip"
ToolTipService.InitialShowDelay="{Binding Value, ElementName=ValueInitialShowDelaySlider}" />
</StackPanel>
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Source code and how it was measured
Every behavior on this page was measured by running it on .NET 10 / Windows 11, using ToolTipDemoScene in this site’s screenshot tool. Tooltips were opened by resting the real mouse on buttons in the measuring window, and Tab was pressed as real keyboard input. Times were taken from the moment the tool moved the cursor onto the button until it saw the tooltip open, checking about every 10 ms, and are rounded to 50 ms; positions are in device-independent pixels; both are the values on the measuring machine.