https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=173667
Bug ID: 173667
Summary: Tooltips cannot be reliably disabled globally on
Windows, causing significant UI delays when hovering
over toolbar icons, menu items, scrollbars, and other
UI elements.
Product: LibreOffice
Version: 26.2.3.2 release
Hardware: x86-64 (AMD64)
OS: Windows (All)
Status: UNCONFIRMED
Severity: normal
Priority: medium
Component: LibreOffice
Assignee: [email protected]
Reporter: [email protected]
Description:
When using LibreOffice on Windows 10 or Windows 11, tooltips are enabled by
default.
On affected systems, moving the mouse pointer over toolbar icons, menu items,
scrollbar controls, or similar UI elements causes a noticeable delay in the
user interface. The pointer appears to "hang" over the UI element, and a grey
tooltip area of varying size is displayed. The actual tooltip text only appears
approximately 2-3 seconds later.
This behavior affects all LibreOffice applications I tested, including Writer,
Calc, and Impress.
The resulting delay makes LibreOffice feel significantly slower and less
responsive than it actually is, especially during normal mouse-driven
interaction with toolbars, menus, and scrollbars.
I was unable to reliably disable this behavior through the LibreOffice user
interface. Removing and recreating the LibreOffice user profile did not solve
the issue either.
The workaround was to manually modify:
%APPDATA%\LibreOffice\4\user\registrymodifications.xcu
and add the following entry:
<item oor:path="/org.openoffice.Office.Common/Help"><prop oor:name="Tip"
oor:op="fuse"><value>false</value></prop></item>
After setting Tip to false, tooltip-related delays were eliminated.
In addition, I changed the following Windows registry values:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\MenuShowDelay
to: 0
and:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse\MouseHoverTime
to: 0
After applying these changes, LibreOffice became substantially more responsive
to mouse input and UI interaction.
I deployed these settings to approximately 360 LibreOffice users in my
organization. Before this change, users regularly complained that the
LibreOffice UI felt slow or sluggish. After deploying the configuration
changes, UI responsiveness improved noticeably.
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install or start LibreOffice on Windows 10 or Windows 11 with a default user
profile.
2. Open Writer, Calc, Impress, or another LibreOffice application.
3. Move the mouse repeatedly across toolbar icons.
4. Move the mouse across menu items and other UI controls.
5. Hover over scrollbar controls or similar interactive elements.
6. Observe the behavior when LibreOffice attempts to display tooltip
information.
7. Try to globally disable tooltips using the available LibreOffice
configuration options.
8. Restart LibreOffice and verify whether the setting is preserved and whether
tooltip-related delays remain disabled.1.
2.
3.
Actual Results:
Tooltips are enabled by default.
When hovering over various LibreOffice UI elements, mouse interaction can
appear to pause or "stick". A grey tooltip area appears first, while the
tooltip text itself may only be rendered after approximately 2-3 seconds.
This behavior occurs across multiple LibreOffice applications.
There does not appear to be a reliable user-facing option to globally disable
these tooltips and persist that configuration.
Recreating the LibreOffice user profile did not resolve the problem.
Manually setting the following configuration property eliminates the tooltip
behavior:
<item oor:path="/org.openoffice.Office.Common/Help"><prop oor:name="Tip"
oor:op="fuse"><value>false</value></prop></item>
Reducing the Windows MenuShowDelay and MouseHoverTime values also significantly
improves perceived LibreOffice UI responsiveness.
Expected Results:
LibreOffice should remain immediately responsive to mouse movements and
mouse-over events.
Tooltips should not introduce noticeable delays when moving across toolbar
icons, menus, scrollbars, or other controls.
Users should have a clearly exposed global option to enable or disable
tooltips, and this setting should be reliably stored in the LibreOffice user
configuration and preserved across restarts.
Ideally, tooltip handling should not block or delay normal UI interaction while
tooltip content is being prepared or rendered.
Reproducible: Always
User Profile Reset: Yes
Additional Info:
Suggested improvements / enhancement goals:
1. Consider shipping LibreOffice with tooltips disabled by default, or
otherwise ensure that tooltip generation cannot negatively affect UI
responsiveness.
2. Provide a global "Enable tooltips" option in the LibreOffice settings and
ensure that disabling it is correctly and permanently stored in the user
configuration.
3. Investigate the interaction between LibreOffice and the Windows settings
`MenuShowDelay` and `MouseHoverTime`.
If these Windows values materially affect LibreOffice responsiveness,
LibreOffice should either avoid unnecessary dependence on them or provide
appropriate Windows-specific handling.
The installer could also optionally inform users about these Windows
settings. Any modification of system-wide Windows user preferences should be
explicit and opt-in.
The relevant Windows Registry locations are:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
MenuShowDelay
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse
MouseHoverTime
My current workaround is:
LibreOffice:
Tip = false
Windows:
MenuShowDelay = 0
MouseHoverTime = 0
This configuration was deployed to approximately 360 LibreOffice users in my
organization and resulted in a substantial improvement in perceived UI
responsiveness.
The issue is important from a usability and adoption perspective: users may
interpret delayed tooltip rendering and mouse-over behavior as general
application slowness, even when document processing itself is not slow.
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