Popover (GUI)

A popover is a container-type graphical control element that hovers over its parent window and blocks any other interaction until it is selected. It can contain various other graphical control elements such as checkboxes, radio buttons, or list boxes. Like any container-type graphical control element, it is meant to group elements that belong together.

Popover graphical control element were introduced in GTK+ 3.12.^[1]

Apple included popovers in their human interface guidelines.^[2] Popovers are in use on the web. Bootstrap has a component to create popovers, similar to those found in iOS.^[3]

When hovering a link in Wikipedia, by default, there is a popup of page preview that is in a way popover: it includes a button and it has more content than in tooltip.

References

^ "Popovers in GTK+". 2014-01-22.
^ Popovers, developer.apple.com
^ Popovers

[1] "Popovers in GTK+". 2014-01-22.

[2] Popovers, developer.apple.com

[3] Popovers

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[2]

[3]

v t e Graphical control elements
Command input	Adjustment handle Button Context menu Drop-down list Hamburger button Menu Pie menu
Data input-output	Checkbox Color picker Combo box Cycle button Date picker Grid view Toggle switch List box List builder Radio button Scrollbar Search box Slider Spinner Text box
Informational	Balloon help Head-up display in computing HUD in video games Icon Infobar Label Loading screen Progress indicator Progress bar Splash screen Throbber Sidebar Status bar Toast Tooltip
Containers	Accordion Tree view Client-side decoration Disclosure widget Frame / Fieldset Menu bar Panel Popover Ribbon Tab Toolbar Window Window decoration Workspace
Navigational	Address bar Breadcrumb navigation Hyperlink Navigation bar Virtual desktop
Special windows	Alert dialog box Dialog box File dialog Inspector window Modal window Palette window
Related concepts	File viewer List of graphical user interface elements Layout manager Look and feel Mouseover Scrolling Widget toolkit WIMP Zoomable user interface