How Many Onboarding Hints Should Be Active on Screen at Once
A new dashboard shows eight onboarding tooltips simultaneously across the screen.
Per this subject's guidance on avoiding tooltip overload, what's the actual recommended limit on simultaneously active hints?
The correct answer is "Never more than one or two at a time."
This subject is specific about the fix for tooltip overload: sequencing. Show one hint, wait for the triggering action or a dismissal, then show the next — never more than one or two active at once. Eight simultaneous hints means the visual noise of "many things demanding attention at once" defeats the purpose regardless of how well each individual tooltip is written, and users dismiss all of them in one reflexive click without reading any.
The distractors don't match this guidance: four ("matching the average screen's quadrants") isn't a rule this subject states at all, and it's still well past the one-or-two ceiling; "as many as fit without overlapping" describes a layout constraint, not the cognitive-load constraint this subject is actually about; and "eight is fine if well-written" is the exact failure mode named — good individual writing doesn't fix the problem of too many hints competing for attention simultaneously.
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