[Epic] [Component sweep] Tooltips: EuiToolTip

[alexmarhaba]

Project Board: https://github.com/orgs/elastic/projects/1079/views/81

Summary / Pitch

Tooltips in Kibana are inconsistent, sometimes invisible, and sometimes too visible. Browser tooltips appear where they shouldn't, EUI tooltips don't appear where they should, and there's a noticeable lag before any tooltip shows up. This epic fixes five user-facing tooltip problems, eliminating browser tooltips, removing hover delay, suppressing unwanted focus-return tooltips, ensuring every icon button has a tooltip, and reducing font size.

Context

Tooltips are the most widely used overlay component in Kibana (~135 files use EuiToolTip, ~90 use EuiIconTip), yet they have no centralized defaults, no lint enforcement, and no shared utilities.

Goals

1. Browser tooltips leak through. ~20-30 interactive elements use the HTML title attribute, producing unstyled native tooltips that conflict with or replace EUI tooltips.
2. Hover delay feels sluggish. EuiToolTip enforces a hardcoded 250ms delay with no instant option.
3. Focus return triggers unwanted tooltips. Closing a modal or popover returns focus to the trigger, which unconditionally fires the tooltip.

• [1Feedback] Tooltip stays visible when it shouldn't kibana#256689

4. Icon buttons lack visible tooltips. Dozens of EuiButtonIcon instances have aria-label for screen readers but no tooltip for sighted users. Some have placeholder labels like aria-label={'oi'} that shipped to production.
5. Font size is too large. Tooltips render at body-text size (~14px), competing visually with the content they describe.

On the DX side, six separate TooltipWrapper components exist across packages with different delay defaults, zero ESLint rules enforce tooltip patterns, and no developer documentation covers common pitfalls (disabled button tooltips, title attribute conflicts, disableScreenReaderOutput usage).

Out of scope

• Chart tooltips (Elastic Charts / @elastic/charts tooltip system) — these are a separate rendering pipeline with different positioning logic.
• Tooltip content authoring (i.e., what text to put in tooltips) — this is a content/UX writing concern, not a component concern.
• Mobile / touch tooltip behavior — EuiToolTip does not currently support touch interactions and that is a separate effort.

Definition of Ready for Dev

• PRD Ready
  • Link: Google Docs
• Design Ready
  • Design issue:
    • [Spike] Investigate whether we can remove animation in tooltips and popovers #9582
    • [Spike] Investigate whether we can make tooltip font-size smaller #9583
  • Design file: Figma
• Estimated
• Tasked

Definition of done

• Kibana QA/preview completed (if needed)
  • Slack thread
  • Upgrade EUI to v115.0.0 kibana#266413
• Changes made in EUI
  • PRs:
    • [EuiToolTip] Show tooltip only on keyboard focus #9624 - focus-return suppression, no tooltip on mouse-click
    • [EuiToolTip] Remove delay and update animation #9626 - delay API, updated animation
    • [EuiToolTip] Update the default font size #9627 - font size default
• EUI, Figma, and Documentation updates published.
  • Figma: link
  • EUI: v115.0.0
  • Documentation:
    • disabled-button tooltip pattern
    • disableScreenReaderOutput guidance
    • browser tooltip (title) vs EuiToolTip
• Request issues resolved and stakeholders informed of release.
  • Links:
    • [EuiToolTip] Expose a property to allow tooltips to not be shown onFocus #9438
    • [EuiToolTip] Tooltips on buttons persist after clicking #9520
    • [EuiToolTip] Tooltip should adjust its position when the anchor element moves #8266
    • [EuiToolTip] Tooltip should adjust its position when the anchor element moves #8266
    • [EuiToolTip] [A11y] Tooltips aren't announced to screen reader #9283
    • [EuiToolTip] [A11y] Tooltip content not announced in Chrome when rendered inside EuiFlyout #9338
    • [EuiToolTipProps] position and delay marked as required when they aren't #9593
• Changes applied to Kibana
  • Links:
    • Upgrade EUI to v115.0.0 kibana#266413
    • Upgrade EUI to v116.1.0 kibana#269821
    • See [EuiToolTip] Replace all title attributes with EuiToolTip kibana#268225 (comment)
• EUI Beta issue created (if applicable)
• EUI Deprecation schedule updated (if applicable)

Milestones

2026-04 (April)

[Pay down Tech Debt]

• [EuiToolTip] Migrate from class to function component #9486
• [EuiToolTip] Memoize generated styles #9521
• [EuiToolTip] [Strict Mode] Tooltip doesn't display #8785
• [EuiToolTipProps] position and delay marked as required when they aren't #9593

[Tackle biggest UX issues]

• [EuiToolTip] Update animation and remove delay #9623
• [EuiToolTip] Hide tooltip on programmatic focus return to the trigger #9580
• [EuiToolTip] Tooltips on buttons persist after clicking #9520
• [EuiToolTip] Change font-size #9560

2026-05 (May)

[Stretch]

• [ESLint] Add a rule about wrapping EuiButtonIcon with EuiToolTip #9578
• [ESLint] Add a rule for EuiToolTip to enforce non-interactive content #9565
• [Tooltips] Update EUI documentation #9568
• [Tooltips] Remove or replace title HTML attribute #9566

Useful Links

• PRD

[JasonStoltz]

@alexmarhaba Per a Triage conversation, this is one we could consider for the sweep. #9438