Intercom tooltip not showing when updating custom attribute via Intercom('update') | Community
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Intercom tooltip not showing when updating custom attribute via Intercom('update')

  • January 20, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 59 views
M

I’m working with Intercom tooltips and want to show or hide them conditionally from my web UI.

I have a toggle button in my frontend that allows users to manually turn tooltips on or off. Based on this toggle, I want to control the visibility of Intercom tooltips.

What I’ve done so far:

  • In Intercom, I configured the tooltip rule as:

    learn_mode == true

  • On the frontend, when the toggle button is clicked, I call:

    Intercom('update', { learn_mode: true }); // or false

  • The goal is:

    • learn_mode = true → show tooltips

    • learn_mode = false → hide tooltips

Issue:

The Intercom('update') call does not seem to trigger the tooltip. The tooltip does not appear or disappear as expected when toggling the button.

Question:

What could be the possible reasons why the Intercom('update') call is not triggering the tooltip, and what should I check to ensure the tooltip renders correctly based on the custom attribute?

Best answer by Sean M

Hi ​@moeznazir47, Seán here from the Intercom engineering support team 👋 thanks for reaching out on this.

The tooltips are loaded on page load along with your sites HTML and CSS files so the page would need to refresh. The tooltip uses HTML attributes to place them so the decision on whether the User can see them or not are done as the page is loaded and either placed on the page or not.

You could use one of the following after the update to do it:

// Reload using the browser cache (default)
location.reload();

// Force a hard reload (re-fetch from server)
location.reload(true);

2 replies

S
Intercom Team
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  • Sean MIntercom Team
  • Intercom Team
  • Answer
  • January 27, 2026

Hi ​@moeznazir47, Seán here from the Intercom engineering support team 👋 thanks for reaching out on this.

The tooltips are loaded on page load along with your sites HTML and CSS files so the page would need to refresh. The tooltip uses HTML attributes to place them so the decision on whether the User can see them or not are done as the page is loaded and either placed on the page or not.

You could use one of the following after the update to do it:

// Reload using the browser cache (default)
location.reload();

// Force a hard reload (re-fetch from server)
location.reload(true);

F
Forum|alt.badge.img+1
  • fovibo
  • Active User
  • February 3, 2026

Updating the user attribute with Intercom('update', { learn_mode: true/false }) does not automatically trigger tooltips, because Intercom only evaluates tooltip rules when they first load or under specific conditions. To make the tooltip show or hide based on your toggle, you need to both update the attribute and manually show or hide the tooltip using Intercom’s API, for example Intercom('show') to display it or Intercom('hide') to hide it. While implementing this, you can also think of your frontend toggle like a laser target practice system, giving precise control over when elements appear or disappear. Also ensure the tooltip is configured to allow repeated showing and that Intercom('update') is called after Intercom has fully loaded.

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