Grammarly’s new feature onboarding is set outside of the product

Grammarly's browser extension introduces a new feature where people actually use it: inside Gmail. At the time of the recording, opening an email starts a four-step new feature tour of black tooltips. The first, "Never miss the point", has an illustration and doubles as the tour's introduction: the most important sentences in the email are now highlighted. The next steps cover acting on highlights ("Put highlights to use"), the recap panel with summaries and follow-up checklists ("View the full recap") and how to collapse recaps or turn them off ("Hide email recaps"). Each tooltip has Back and Next buttons and a step counter.

Why it works

• Space-aware: the tour runs on someone else's interface, so instead of opening with a separate welcome modal, Grammarly puts the introduction into the first tooltip and gets straight to the feature.
• Coloured to stand out: Gmail is mostly white in its default theme, so black tooltips are hard to miss and don't blend into the page.
• Headlines that carry the message: each tooltip title is a short value statement ("Never miss the point"), so you understand the feature even if you only read the first line of each step.
• An exit in the last step: the tour ends by showing how to hide recaps or turn the feature off, which is honest about a change people didn't ask for.

More on this pattern: new feature onboarding and product tour examples.