Beacon class Hints

A pulsing dot that draws the eye, and opens a hint when tapped.

The quiet alternative to a tour: leave one next to a feature people keep missing, and let them find it in their own time.

Beacon(
  message: 'Long-press a shift to duplicate it',
  child: const Icon(Icons.calendar_month),
)

With no child the beacon is just the dot, which is what you want when it sits in a Stack over something else. With a child, the dot is positioned at alignment over it.

The pulse stops under MediaQueryData.disableAnimations, and the dot carries a semantic label so it is not an invisible affordance to a screen reader.

Testing

A pulsing beacon always has a frame scheduled, so tester.pumpAndSettle() on a page containing one never returns. Either pass autoStart: false in widget tests, or pump a fixed number of frames:

await tester.pump(const Duration(milliseconds: 300));