19 best open-source tooltip plugins made with jQuery, CSS, and JavaScript

[Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article listed 73 tooltip plugins. That felt like...a lot. We pared down the list to 19 items, because sometimes less really is more.]

When it comes to user onboarding, tooltips are a lot like road signs.

Road signs convey important information to drivers—and drivers shouldn’t need to slow down to understand them. A good tooltip works the same way. They concisely explain your product’s feature in a neat little text box, removing friction and helping users continue on their way.

These powerful UI patterns are widely used in product tours and feature releases for good reason. Product and feature adoption relies heavily on your ability to quickly bring users to that pivotal moment of value—your product’s aha moment. Whereas UI patterns like modal windows require a user’s acknowledgment and bring momentum to a halt, tooltips provide context to your users with minimal disruption.

You need tooltips in your app to provide the best possible experience for your users, which means you’re going to need a way to set up those road signs. There’s good news on that front: dozens of open-source jQuery, CSS, and JavaScript plugins are available on the web—and these 19 rank among our favorites.

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📖 Read up on some of our top tips for using this small but mighty UI pattern correctly.

jQuery tooltip plugins

jQuery is a JavaScript library that was created to simplify development, which has made it the go-to cross-platform solution for developers. It’s especially adept at handling animated tooltips. Some of the best jQuery tooltip plugins include:

1. Tooltipster

This is a picture of a jquery tooltip plugin default setting. It shows a trigger that says hover and a tooltip with a point that says Hi I am a tooltip.

Language(s): jQuery
What we like about it: Plugin for making clean, modern tooltips with many possible interactions, themes, and triggers.

2. Grumble.js

This is an image of a round bubble shaped tooltip callout. It is an unusual tooltip. An orange bubble says bubble tastic. This tooltip plugin is made with jquery. It says grumble.js

Language(s): jQuery
What we like about it: Animated and stylized tooltip bubbles that can be rotated around a given element at any angle.

3. Protip

This is a tooltip demo page. It shows a customizable jquery tooltip with an editor with multiple settings like trigger arrow title target animate mixin observer width scheme etc.

Language(s): jQuery
What we like about it: Intricate tooltip with multiple skins, placements, and animations, designed for “any situation.”

4. JBox

This is a screenshot of a tooltip that says "you have many options to position and animate your jboxes". This is a jquery tooltip plugin that is fully responsive.

Language(s): jQuery
What we like about it: A powerful and flexible plugin that also features modal windows and notices. Lightweight, customizable, and responsive.

5. Crumble

This is an interactive produt feature tour for websites or apps made with an open source jquery tooltip plugin. The tooltip is styled and shaped like a bubble.

Language(s): jQuery
What we like about it: Interactive jquery features tours. Quirky bubble style is visually interesting. Requires grumble.js (above).

6. Toolbar.Js

This is an example of a tooltip toolbar made with jquery. It is an animated toolbar example made with a free plugin and has three icons.

Language(s): jQuery
What we like about it: Neat little jQuery plugin that makes tooltip-style toolbars for web apps and websites.

CSS tooltip plugins

For those who prefer to work in CSS, fear not. There’s a wealth of tooltip plugins made especially for you:

7. CSS Tooltip

This is a gif of a CSS tooltip animation. It shows an animated tooltip with righthand alignment. The button moves when the cursor hovers over it and a tooltip pops up.

Language(s): CSS
What we like about it: Simple tooltip with smooth animation made with HTML and CSS.

8. Fade-in tooltip

This is a gif showing a tooltip animation on social icons. It shows a tooltip plugin used on facebook twitter github pinterest and dribble social icons. This is an open source tooltip made with css

Language(s): CSS
What we like about it: Simple tooltip made featuring fade-in animation.

9. Microtip

this is an animated gif of a very simple tooltip's demo page. It shows the positioning of a css tooltip with top right left bottom etc options available in this lightweight tooltip library.

Language(s): CSS
What we like about it: Modern, minimal and very lightweight CSS-only tooltip library.

10. Wenk

This is a screenshot of a tooltip demo. The tooltip says I'm to the right and has an emoji in it. It is illustrating that this CSS tooltip can be displayed at different positions.

Language(s): CSS
What we like about it: Lightweight tooltip available made with CSS. Can be easily styled using attributes or classes.

11. Dynamic tooltip text

Language(s): CSS
What we like about it: Write JavaScript-less, dynamic tooltip text that changes relative to button state.

12. Simptip

Language(s): CSS
What we like about it: CSS tooltip made with Sass, which is pretty cool.

13. Adaptive Tooltip

adaptive tooltip on hover over a cow icon

Language(s): CSS
What we like about it: Simple little adaptive tooltip that appears on hover.

14. Tootik

Language(s): CSS
What we like about it: A pure CSS/SCSS/LESS tooltip library with straightforward customization options. Easy to use.

15. First letter CSS property tooltip

Language(s): CSS
What we like about it: Simple tooltip with subtle fade-in/fade-out animation. Uses CSS and first letter CSS property.

JavaScript tooltip plugins

jQuery may simplify things, but sometimes the solution calls for plain-ol’ JavaScript. In those cases, choose from one of these helpful plugins:

16. Tippy.js

This is an image from a javascript tooltip plugin demo page showing different types of tooltip interactivity. The two interaction options are hover and click.

Language(s): JavaScript
What we like about it: Highly customizable vanilla JS tooltip library with many possible interactions, animations, and themes. Can contain HTML, and has a ton of features like dropdown nesting and cursor follow.

17. Automatic Tooltips

This is an image of tooltips attached to text. This tooltip is made with javascript and is automatically positioned. The text explains that it is not a native tooltip so it can be styled and automatically positioned on any element according to title attrinbute.

Language(s): Javascript
What we like about it: Fully styleable tooltips that can be automatically positioned.

18. Intro.js

This is a feature introduction tour with spotlights and tooltips. It is a step by step guide made using javascript tooltips. It has numbered tooltips and focus areas.

Language(s): JavaScript
What we like about it: Powerful, versatile product feature tour library for step-by-step guides. No dependencies, user-friendly.

19. HubSpot Tooltip

This is a gif of a hubspot tooltip that you can download from Github. it is made with javascript and css and it built on tether and drop. It shows a tool tip at each of the directional positions going around a box. It is an animation showing that this js and css library can create customized tooltips with intelligent positioning.

Language(s): JavaScript, CSS
What we like about it: JS and CSS library for creating styleable tooltips. Built on Tether and Drop.

For your consideration: No-code tooltips

These open-source plugins work well for teams with enough bandwidth to code their own tooltips, but they’re not always great fits for every product team. Coding takes time and knowledge, and not every open-source solution out there offers robust functionality or pleasing aesthetic options.

That’s why more than 1,500 companies choose Appcues for their tooltip-building needs. It’s a no-code solution that combines ease of use with powerful features designed to improve your UX, including:

Behavior-triggered actions. Only activate tooltips for users who need them, when they need them.
Customized design. Create tooltips that look native to your app!
Versatility. Attach tooltips to both static and dynamic UI elements.
In-depth analytics. Analyze the performance of your product tours, feature announcements, and other in-app messaging efforts using Appcues’ powerful analytics tool.
Expert support. Take advantage of Appcues’ experienced support staff if and when questions arise while using the app.
Mobile functionality—coming soon! Build knockout tooltips for both web and mobile apps.

Tooltips can make or break your product’s UX. If you want your product to become synonymous with words like “seamless,” “intuitive,” and “well-designed,” Appcues will help get you there.

Impress your users during onboarding with in-app messages from Appcues

SHOW ME THE TOOLTIPS

Want tooltips but don't have the dev resources to build them?

Appuces makes it easy to create native-looking tooltips, without tying up valuable dev resources
Improve product adoption using tooltips for walkthroughs, product tutorials, and feature announcements.

[Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article listed 73 tooltip plugins. That felt like...a lot. We pared down the list to 19 items, because sometimes less really is more.]

When it comes to user onboarding, tooltips are a lot like road signs.

‍

📖 Read up on some of our top tips for using this small but mighty UI pattern correctly.