How to Implement Tooltips in Flutter

A tooltip displays an informative message when users hover, tap, or focus on an element.

In Flutter, you can use a built-in widget named Tooltip to create tooltips with ease. In this article, we’ll go over a complete example of using the Tooltip widget in practice (with Material 3), and then see its constructor as well as the properties.

The Example

Preview

This tiny app displays an image in the center of the screen. A tooltip with an indigo background will show up when you long-press the image:

The Code

The full source code in main.dart:

// main.dart
import 'package:flutter/material.dart';

void main() {
  runApp(const MyApp());
}

class MyApp extends StatelessWidget {
  const MyApp({Key? key}) : super(key: key);

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return MaterialApp(
      // Remove the debug banner
      debugShowCheckedModeBanner: false,
      title: 'KindaCode.com',
      theme: ThemeData(primarySwatch: Colors.pink, useMaterial3: true),
      home: const HomeScreen(),
    );
  }
}

class HomeScreen extends StatefulWidget {
  const HomeScreen({Key? key}) : super(key: key);

  @override
  State<HomeScreen> createState() => _HomeScreenState();
}

class _HomeScreenState extends State<HomeScreen> {
  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return Scaffold(
      appBar: AppBar(
        title: const Text('KindaCode.com'),
      ),
      body: Center(
          child: Tooltip(
              message: 'This is a cute dog. Do you like him?',
              padding: const EdgeInsets.all(30),
              margin: const EdgeInsets.only(top: 80, left: 50),
              decoration: BoxDecoration(
                  color: Colors.indigo,
                  borderRadius: BorderRadius.circular(20)),
              textStyle: const TextStyle(
                  fontSize: 15,
                  fontStyle: FontStyle.italic,
                  color: Colors.white),
              child: SizedBox(
                width: 320,
                height: 240,
                child: Image.network(
                  'https://www.kindacode.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/the-dog.jpeg',
                  fit: BoxFit.cover,
                ),
              ))),
    );
  }
}

API

In order to add a tooltip to a widget, what you need to do is to wrap that widget inside a Tooltip widget, like this:

Tooltip(
   message: 'This is a tooltip',
   child: OutlinedButton(onPressed: () {}, child: const Text('A Button')),
)

Constructor:

Tooltip({
  Key? key, 
  String? message, 
  InlineSpan? richMessage, 
  double? height, 
  EdgeInsetsGeometry? padding, 
  EdgeInsetsGeometry? margin, 
  double? verticalOffset, 
  bool? preferBelow, 
  bool? excludeFromSemantics, 
  Decoration? decoration, 
  TextStyle? textStyle, 
  Duration? waitDuration, 
  Duration? showDuration, 
  Widget? child, 
  TooltipTriggerMode? triggerMode, 
  bool? enableFeedback
})

Frequently used options:

• height: Specifies the height of the tooltip
• padding: Padding of the tooltip
• margin: Margin of the tooltip
• decoration: Controls the shape and background color of the tooltip
• preferBelow: The tooltip will show up below the child or not
• showDuration: How long the tooltip will be shown
• textStyle: The style of the tooltip’s message
• waitDuration: The amount of time that a pointer must over the tooltip before the message appears
• verticalOffset: The vertical gap between the widget and the displayed tooltip
• enableFeedback: Whether the tooltip provides acoustic and/or haptic feedback

Conclusion

You’ve learned the fundamentals and gone through an example of using the Tooltip widget to provide extra useful information to your users. If you’d like to explore more new and awesome features in Flutter, take a look at the following articles:

• Flutter: Drawing an N-Pointed Star with CustomClipper
• Adding a Border to Text in Flutter
• Flutter: Stream.periodic example
• Flutter: DropdownButton Example
• Flutter: How to Colorize Debug Console Logs
• Using Cascade Notation in Dart and Flutter

You can also take a tour around our Flutter topic page and Dart topic page to see the latest tutorials and examples.