A popover is a container-type

graphical control element A graphical widget (also graphical control element or control) in a graphical user interface is an element of interaction, such as a button or a scroll bar. Controls are software components that a computer user interacts with through direct m ...

that hovers over its parent window. It can contain various other graphical control elements such as checkboxes,

radio button A radio button or option button is a graphical control element that allows the user to choose only one of a predefined set of mutually exclusive options. The singular property of a radio button makes it distinct from checkboxes, where the user ...

s, or list boxes. Like any container-type graphical control element, it is meant to group elements that belong together. Popover graphical control elements were introduced in

GTK+ GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free software cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both free and proprietary s ...

3.12. Apple included popovers in their

human interface guidelines Human interface guidelines (HIG) are software development documents which offer application developers a set of recommendations. Their aim is to improve the experience for the users by making application interfaces more intuitive, learnable, and ...

. Popovers are in use on the web. Bootstrap has a component to create popovers, similar to those found in iOS.Popovers
/ref> 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 The tooltip, also known as infotip or hint, is a common graphical user interface (GUI) element in which, when hoverbox, hovering over a screen element or component, a text box displays information about that element, such as a description of a ...

References

{{Graphical control elements Graphical control elements