For the past couple of weeks, I've been working on a release for PrettyTooltip, an addon that gives the game's tooltips a new look, with (subjectively) improved readability and some extra contextual information.
You can find the addon (latest version 1.2.1) on:
Motivation
I originally developed a similar, smaller addon for personal use back in original Classic run (around 2020), mostly to shorten the long equip effects commonly found on rare/epic items (e.g. related to critical strike chance, attack power or healing/spell damage) and provide line colorization (e.g. spell schools, physical vs magic effects). The main goal was to improve readability of tooltip data with minor changes.
However, with the recent industry-wide changes in software engineering related to coding and LLM-based tooling,, I realised that I could build something a bit bigger in a reasonable time frame and limited free time, so I took up this project a couple of weeks ago and decided to release it to the public as it may be useful to someone else.
I do not know all the other tooltip addons out there, but here's some prior work in case you are interested in existing alternatives:
Description
The addon is built in a modular way, allowing you to selectively disable reskinning for any tooltips that you prefer to keep default.
- Items get grouped stats, shorter equip descriptions and clearer sections for effects, enchants and other details. I also added small icons for "Chance On Hit"/"On Use" effects. The footer shows durability, requirements and sell prices. There is also an optional disenchanting drop table. Comparisons keep the game's own stat-change summary for now, though I have plans to make it inline in the future.
- Spells and talents show school and rank, with resource cost, cast time, cooldown and range grouped together in a new section. They can also show spell power coefficients where applicable, including a breakdown of base damage/healing and spell power contribution, and damage or healing per second and per mana. Note: this data may have some errors as the rounding math for spell damage is not explained clearly. If you have a good source on it, let me know.
- Players and NPCs show portraits, class or reaction colors, level, guild, target and the game's own health bar. Elites, rares and bosses get the familiar dragon artwork, while players show their faction crest.
- Buffs and debuffs show the dispel type, stacks, caster and remaining time, with a bar that drains as the aura runs out.
- Quests show their level, status and objectives as a checklist. This works with quest links, the world map's quest log and Questie. With DialogueUI installed, there's also an optional parchment style for quests and quest items.
- Gathering tooltips can show drop tables and skill requirements for herbs, ore and skinnable creatures. Herb and ore tooltips also show vendor prices, with auction prices available through Auctionator.
- Macros, pet abilities, the minimap and flight paths are also supported.
There's a style editor for fonts, colors and layout of all elements. You can click directly on a part of the sample tooltip to customize it, change the panel style and spacing, or adjust stat, spell school and class colors. Optional details like disenchanting information, spell power breakdowns and gathering drops can be toggled there too.
If you prefer the default item tooltip, you can toggle Lite mode, which just shortens the longer stat descriptions, with some coloring for magical stats and effects.
You can also hold ALT at any time to see the game's original tooltip. This can help with troubleshooting.
Data added by other addons are kept below the main content, so their information is preserved.
Future Work
I don't have a clear roadmap, but in general, I'll work on the addon both based on user feedback and depending on my own needs over time as long as I play the game.
I'd be interested in collaborating with someone on the art side as well to improve the overall visual style in a way that allows us to convert more text into suitable icons/symbols and/or distinctive frame borders (e.g. spell-school based for spells, or progressively refined tooltips for rare/epic/legendary items, rather than just pure visual recoloring).
I also got a few requests for localization (Korean/Chinese), but I don't have the bandwidth/clients/tools to really support this.
The goal is to keep information density high, while visual presentation stays readable, scannable and reasonably interoperable with other addons.
I'd love to hear what you think: feedback, bug reports and ideas are all welcome!
AI Disclaimer
I have used a mix of Claude Opus 5.5 and GPT 6 Sol during development, and around 99% of the code is LLM-generated, including supporting Python tools and scripts. I'm aware that the code may have Claudisms and other unusual terms in comments and variable names. I'm also a professional software developer with around 10 YoE, so I'm familiar with software development before LLM era.
Acknowledgements
I'd like to thank to current user base and several folks that have reported issues, suggested enhancements and helped me address a couple of bugs (Benbass, Nerf_Teh_Derp and others from CurseForge).
I'd also like to thank Peterodox (creator of Dialogue UI, https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/dialogueui) for allowing me to read/reuse some of the textures for tooltip backdrops. Note that this visual setting is only available if his addon is installed, I am not repackaging any assets.