What is popover=hint?

If you’ve been following along with advancements in HTML, such as the new popover API, you may have noticed that a new popover type (hint) recently landed in Chrome 133 (January 2025). But what exactly does it do?

The short answer is: popover="hint" allows you to open an unrelated hint popover without closing other popovers in the stack. This means you can have an existing stack of auto popovers remain open while still displaying a hint popover.

You often see this sort of behavior in tooltips that might contain additional information, or link previews. An example is the profile preview card on Twitter when you hover over someone’s profile picture in the Twitter timeline, or the list of folks who liked a post on Facebook when you hover over the “Comments” button. If you had another popover open, such as the Facebook chat in the bottom right corner of the web UI, popover="hint" is ideal because opening the hint popover wouldn’t close the other one.

In the following demo there are two popovers: one opens on the three-dot menu, and the other when you show interest in the comments link. The menu popover is an auto popover and the comment popover is a hint popover.

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