Apple Hig Offering Help

---
name: apple-hig-offering-help
description: Use when creating, reviewing, or adapting contextual tips, inline guidance, tutorials, and control tooltips.
---

# Teach the current task at the point of need

Read [the help guide](../../references/offering-help.md). This workflow is application advice; tips are not a substitute for understandable controls.

Inspect the misunderstood task/control, learning evidence, complexity, platform/input, and create/review/adapt request. Identify first-use versus experienced states and whether the interface itself can remove the confusion. Do not invent usability observations from a screenshot.

Use concise inline guidance for a small step, a contextual tip for a brief feature, or a tutorial for larger goals. Keep help dismissible, inclusive, and matched to actual input/device. Teach the app-specific effect rather than ordinary system gestures. Tips should offer a direct action and event-based eligibility/cadence so expertise does not trigger repeated basics; the source's cadence example is not an absolute daily rule. For unusual controls, a small visual can beat long prose. Mac/visionOS tooltips describe the indicated action briefly, adapting by state and allowing localization, rather than becoming a whole task manual.

Implement the requested help/cadence or deliver exact copy, anchor, eligibility, dismissal, and later-access specifications; reviews identify concrete timing/scope defects. Avoid adding promotion to help content.

**Worked transformation:** Before: a spreadsheet shows “Tap here to click the button” at every launch and a tooltip containing a six-step import tutorial. Decision: generic repeated instruction and oversized scope obscure real help. After: use an eligible first-relevant-use tip explaining the import effect, a short action tooltip, and a separate accessible tutorial for the full workflow.

Deliver the artifact and content/location/eligibility/exit contract. Verify already-experienced, dismissed, wrong-context, and localized states plus help access later. Fail for repeated dismissed tips, hidden task controls, device-inappropriate instructions, or help that cannot be closed. Native tooltip/look behavior requires execution evidence.

Load [onboarding](../apple-hig-onboarding/SKILL.md) for initial learning or [buttons](../../../apple-hig-menus-and-actions/.topics/apple-hig-buttons/SKILL.md) when the control itself needs repair.