The question bar
How the question bar behaves for a shopper: its resting state with a typewriter, its engaged state with chips, the mobile fold into a bubble, and what each state changes in your measurements.
The question bar is a bottom-docked text field. It takes little room until the shopper shows interest. It has three states, and a shopper moves between them without any setting on your side.
| State | When | What the shopper sees |
|---|---|---|
| Rest | The shopper has not touched the bar | The bar alone. No chip. The field types your starter questions on a loop |
| Engaged | Focus is inside the bar | Chips above the bar, a stronger shadow and, on a desktop window, a wider bar |
| Folded | A narrow window (767px or less), after the shopper scrolls down | A round bubble, as tall as the bar, with your chosen icon at the bar's right edge |
You set the colours, size, corners, shadow, the folded bubble's icon, offsets and text in the editor, as for any widget. The states themselves have no setting. To see each one before you publish, use the preview's state control.
At rest
The bar shows no starter-question chip. Instead the field types the questions the chips would show (up to three, the same ones the library resolves for that page) one after the other, in a loop. Each question is typed, held for a moment, faded out, and the next one starts.
- It is a drawing over the field, not the field's value. Nothing the typewriter shows can be sent, and a shopper who starts typing never sees it mixed with their own text.
- It stops when the field gets focus, and while the field holds text or the conversation panel is open. It starts again when the bar returns to rest with an empty field.
- With the operating system's reduced-motion setting on, the bar shows the first question, still, and does not animate the typing. Its transitions play instantly.
- Your placeholder is still the field's accessible name. A screen reader announces it. The typed text is hidden from assistive technology.
- With Show starter questions off, or no question that qualifies for the page, there is nothing to type: the field shows your placeholder as it always did.
Accessibility of the typed questions
The typed questions are a decorative layer over the field. They never become its value or its accessible name, and screen readers do not read them out. The field's accessible name stays your placeholder.
The loop runs for as long as the bar is at rest, and typing stops when the field gets focus or the shopper starts typing. With the operating system's reduced-motion setting on, the bar shows the first question, still, and nothing animates.
There is no pause control on the page. If you need one, turn off Show starter questions on the widget's Content tab, then go live. The field then shows your placeholder, with no typing. We make no claim of WCAG conformance for this behaviour.
Engaged
Focus anywhere inside the bar engages it: a click or tap on the field, the keyboard, or the send button. A click on the bar outside the send button puts focus in the field.
- Chips reveal one by one, the bottom one first, each rising from behind the bar. Which chips and how many is unchanged: up to three, resolved the same way as before.
- The shadow steps up one level of the widget's Shadow setting: Small becomes Medium, Medium becomes Large. Large stays Large and None stays None.
- On a desktop window wider than 767px the bar widens, around its centre, to a width set by its size (462px, 520px or 620px for Small, Medium and Large in a 1512px window), within the window minus 16px on each side and never more than 640px. See How wide the question bar is. At 767px or less it never widens. No part of your page moves.
- A keyboard focus ring shows around the bar while the field has keyboard focus: 2px, in the send button's colour. When that colour has under 3:1 contrast against the bar, the ring uses the bar's text colour instead. The send button and the chips get the same 2px outline on keyboard focus. A click or tap shows no ring.
Escape, or focus leaving the bar, returns it to rest. Tapping a chip does not take focus off the field first, so the chips stay in place until the tap lands.
Chips on the bar
The bar's chips differ from those of the chat bubble:
- 14px text, 15px at 767px or less, at normal weight.
- As wide as the question needs, up to the engaged width. A longer question wraps onto a second line and ends in an ellipsis after two.
- French gets a narrow no-break space before
?,!,:,;and», so a lone mark never wraps onto a line of its own.
The field and the send button
The field is 16px at 767px or less, so iOS does not zoom the page when the shopper focuses it. The send button is at 50% opacity and disabled while the field is empty.
Folded, on a narrow window
At 767px or less, once the shopper has scrolled down 48px, an idle bar folds into a round bubble as tall as the bar (56px at Medium, the size a new bar starts at). Idle means no focus in the bar and no text in the field. The bubble sits at the bar's right edge, at the bar's bottom offset (the narrow-screen offset when you set one), and shows the icon set under Folded bubble on the Appearance tab (AI sparkles by default).
- Reloading a page part-way down does not fold it. The 48px are measured from where the page stands half a second after the bar appears, and scrolling before then does not count, so the scroll position a browser restores on a reload never folds the bar. It folds once the shopper scrolls 48px further down.
- Scrolling back up does not unfold it. The next fold is measured from the lowest scroll position reached since.
- A tap, or Enter, on the bubble unfolds it and puts focus in the field, which opens the keyboard on a phone.
- A bar with text in the field, or with focus, never folds. The conversation panel being open does not fold it either.
- The bubble's icon comes from the same list as every other widget's: AI sparkles or Round bubble. See Appearance and placement.
The rest of the folded bar's box hands its taps back to your page, so the bubble does not block what sits beside it.
When a shopper sends a question
A send or a chip tap fades the bar out in 150ms while the conversation panel slides in, then resets it. What the shopper typed stays visible until the bar is invisible. The bar comes back at rest once the panel has closed. If another trigger opens the panel (your own button, say), the bar hides at once instead.
What it changes in your measurements
On the question bar, a starter_question_shown impression now counts a chip that was revealed, which means the bar was engaged. A question the typewriter typed is never an impression. Before, the bar showed its chips all the time and counted them once on screen.
Question bar numbers before 2026-10-12 are not comparable
From 2026-10-12, impressions for the question bar, and the click-through rates built on them, count only shoppers who engaged the bar. Earlier ones count every shopper who had the bar on screen, because its chips were always visible. A rate in the Engagement report or on a question's page that spans that date mixes the two. Compare periods that sit entirely on one side of it.
Other surfaces (welcome screen, chat bubble, Starters) are measured as before.
When the states are unavailable
The states need a stylesheet the tag builds in the browser. Where the browser cannot build one (very old engines), the bar has no states: its chips are always visible, and there is no typewriter and no fold. The bar's background and shadow come from the same stylesheet, so the bar is drawn without them and the page behind it shows through; the rest of its look is not guaranteed. In that case chips count as seen when they render.
Page-type targeting
Show on every page, or an allow-list of page types. A widget with neither renders nowhere, however else it is configured, and an inline widget has no "all pages" mode at all.
The inline button
A labelled control that sits inside your own content flow instead of a corner of the screen: what you configure, what it inherits, and the rules that differ from a floating widget.