Standalone Hints vs. Tour Steps

Not every hint needs to be part of a tour. Understanding when to use each gives your users the right guidance at the right time.

Standalone Hints

Hints not assigned to any tour. They appear independently on the page as always-available contextual help.

Best for:

Explaining complex UI elements users might not understand

Tooltips on icons or buttons

Feature discovery — highlighting things users often miss

Persistent help that's always visible on the page

Tour Steps

Hints assigned to a tour with a specific step order. Users navigate through them sequentially with Back/Next buttons and see their progress ("Step 2 of 5").

Best for:

Onboarding new users through a workflow

Guiding through multi-step processes

Feature walkthroughs with a clear start and finish

Training sequences that build on each step

How to Tell Them Apart

In the sidebar, standalone hints appear under Standalone Hints with a count badge. Tour steps appear under their tour name with step numbers.

Converting Between Them

You can switch anytime without recreating the hint:

Standalone → Tour step:
1. Edit the hint
2. Set "Assign to Tour" to your target tour
3. Set the step order
4. Save

Tour step → Standalone:
1. Edit the hint
2. Set "Assign to Tour" to "Standalone Hint (not in tour)"
3. Save

Using Both Together

Most products benefit from a combination:

A tour for first-time onboarding — "Welcome! Let's set up your account in 3 steps"

Standalone hints for ongoing help — "This button exports your data as CSV"

Tours get users started. Standalone hints keep them from getting stuck later.

Pro Tip

Start with standalone hints on your most confusing UI elements. Once you see which ones get the most engagement, group the best ones into a tour for a structured onboarding flow.

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Next: Customizing tour branding