Hotspots
iMovie’s onboarding flow is unusual but clever
iMovie keeps a yellow question mark on screen that labels every control at once with short tooltips, some linking on to the user guide.
iMovie's help sits on the old-school side of onboarding. At the time of the screenshot, the iPhone app showed a yellow question mark button on every screen, a help hotspot users could tap whenever they liked. Tapping it covers the screen in yellow labels, one per control: "Back to projects.", "Add media.", "Tap to undo. Hold to redo.", "Change theme and more." On the Projects screen, the labels point to Import and "Learn more about movies and trailers".
Why it works
✅ Available at all times: the question mark never leaves the screen, so help is one tap away whenever a user gets stuck, not only on first launch.
✅ Short and concise: each label is a few words, and some aren't full sentences. That's enough to name what a control does.
✅ A route to more detail: labels that end in ">" can be tapped to open the matching page of the user guide.
More on this pattern: UX/UI hotspots and mobile app onboarding.
