Field Role Hints

Field Role Hints allows site builders to provide different field help text for different user roles. This makes it possible to tailor editorial guidance to the person actually editing the content, without changing the field itself or duplicating forms.

Highlights

Field Role Hints is especially useful on editorial sites where authors, editors, reviewers, and administrators all work on the same content but need different instructions.

• Configure role-based field help text.
• Choose whether role-specific help text appends to or replaces the default field description.
• Improve the editing experience without changing field access or field storage.
• Supports common Drupal field widget structures including text, formatted text, file, image, link, and datetime widgets.
• Handles nested and composite widgets more reliably.
• Includes automated test coverage for supported widget structures.

Use Cases

• Show different instructions to authors, editors, and administrators on the same field.
• Provide additional guidance for less experienced editors without adding noise for senior users.
• Add role-specific requirements to image fields, such as accessibility guidance, asset preparation rules, or review notes.
• Display different SEO, legal, governance, or publishing guidance depending on the current user's role.
• Reuse the same field across bundles while adapting the editing guidance to the current editor.
• Improve complex editorial forms where a single static field description is insufficient.

Why This Module Is Useful

• Drupal core field descriptions are static.
• Editorial teams often need different instructions for different roles on the same form.
• Existing related modules mainly focus on bulk help-text editing, placement, visibility, or access control.
• Field Role Hints focuses specifically on role-based editorial guidance during content editing.
• It is particularly useful for structured editorial workflows with multiple contributor roles.

Requirements

• Drupal 10.3, Drupal 11, or Drupal 12.
• Drupal core Node and User modules.
• Field UI is recommended so site builders can configure fields through the Drupal administration interface.

Installation

Install Field Role Hints like any other Drupal contributed module.

Using Composer:
composer require drupal/field_role_hints
drush en field_role_hints

Using the Drupal administration UI:
1. Place the module in your site's `modules/contrib` directory.
2. Go to `Extend`.
3. Enable `Field Role Hints`.

Configuration

• Enable the module.
• Navigate to: Administration » Configuration » Content authoring » Field role hints
• Configure:
  • Default hint mode:
    - Append role hint to existing help text
    - Replace existing help text with role hint
  • Enabled entity types
  • Role priority order
• Edit any supported field and enable: Enable role-based hints for this field
• Add role-specific help text for each role.
• Save the field configuration.

Users will now see contextual help text based on their assigned roles.

Similar Modules And How This Differs

Field Help Text – Manages shared field help text across fields.
Label Help – Displays additional static help below field labels.
Help Text – Lets users toggle help text visibility.

How Field Role Hints differs:

• Field Role Hints focuses specifically on changing field help text based on the current user's role.
• It works directly with Drupal's existing field description area.
• Role-specific help text can either append to or replace the default field description.
• It is designed for editorial workflows where different users require different guidance on the same field.