The discussion revolves around an issue with tooltips not showing up on devices with touchscreen capabilities. some-user reported that despite installing and activating the plugin, tooltips were not visible on their device. codinghorror suggested that the issue might be related to touchscreen interference and recommended testing on a non-touchscreen device.
some-user confirmed that the issue was indeed related to touchscreen devices, as the tooltips appeared on a non-touchscreen laptop but not on a touchscreen laptop or a secondary non-touch display connected to a touchscreen laptop.
codinghorror further explained that hover functionality works fine on non-touchscreen devices but is problematic on laptops with both touchscreen and mouse/touchpad capabilities. They suggested that a possible solution might involve CSS4 media detection but was unsure if it was feasible.
A fix for the issue was merged by pmusaraj, which enables tooltips to display on touchscreen devices when navigating with a mouse. However, tooltips will still not display when navigating using the touchscreen. Users who self-host their site are advised to rebuild it to incorporate the recent plugin change.
The plugin seems to be pretty straightforward: install, activate.
I’ve done both, result:
But there are no tooltips shown 
Not when I’m logged in, not with private browser window and not logged in.
Any idea on how I could debug this?
Maybe my expectation is completely wrong… is this plugin enabled on meta? Because I also don’t see tooltips here as I would expect them with the plugin enabled.
Are you testing on a touchscreen laptop? I suggest testing on a Mac to rule out touchscreen interference.
I didn’t want to buy a Mac only to test this 
But indeed the tooltip appears on a laptop without touchscreen (not on meta though).
It isn’t working on a secondary non-touch display connected to a laptop with touchscreen.
At least some user will profit from the tooltips.
Is the touchscreen issue considered a bug?
hover does work fine on machines that don’t have touchscreens. You get hover with a mouse or touchpad pointer, for example, here is me hovering over the share button:
But for the laptops that have touchscreen and mouse/touchpad.. I’m not sure there is a way to detect when the mouse is unplugged versus plugged in.
I don’t know if there’s any way to fix this through CSS4 media detection:
But it would be nice to be able to fix this for devices that show up as both touchscreen and mouse – to allow hover for them. Users have resorted to disabling the touchscreen on their laptop to get it to work, probably because they never use the touchscreen part anyway.
I tested this .. Edit fiddle - JSFiddle - Code Playground and got
mouse
touch mouse ← wrong!I also tested Checking device hover capabilities with JavaScript using interaction media features - JSFiddle - Code Playground and same results – the touchscreen + mouse device looks identical to the desktop.
I just merged a fix for this, so the tooltips plugin hovers will now display on touchscreen devices (like Chromebooks, Surfaces) if you navigate using the mouse. (They will not display if you navigate using the touchscreen.)
If you’re self-hosting the site, make sure you rebuild it to pull the recent plugin change.
