Ask HN: Why are toggle switches replacing checkboxes? Isn't on/off less obvious?
My pet peeve is the labeling of these things.<p>1)I'm going to give you an easy one to start. You see a toggle switch.  It is set to on (probably - the little colour bar in the switch is coloured in).<p>It is labeled "Disable fnurbification".<p>Okay now what?  Does "on" mean I'm going to be fnurbified? Does switching the switch disable the fnurbification so I actually have to switch it to "off"? No that's crazy.  "on" means "disabled", cognative dissonance aside.<p>2) You see a toggle switch.  It is set to on like before. It is labeled "Disable fnurbification".<p>We learned before that "on" meant "disabled", but that filled us with a vague sense of unease.  For whatever reason we try toggling the switch.  The text changes to just "Fnurbification"<p>Okay really now what?  Is my fnurbification on?  You try flicking the switch back.  The colour fills in and the label changes to "Disable fnurbification" again. Okay what are we supposed to do?<p>What's happened is the designer has read a post on medium about accessibility and that screen readers don't read out the colour of the filled in part of a toggle switch, and has decided to help by changing the label when the state of the switch changes.<p>The problem is now the label could either be describing the current state or be describing what happens when you flip the switch. And there's really no way of knowing.  I've seen this very often with the UX for boolean selectors where they use things like buttons rather than toggle switches.  Does pressing the button do the thing it says on the label or does the label describe where we are now and pressing the button will reverse that?  No way to be sure.<p>Postscript: Notice that whatever you decide is correct in the second case could change what you would do in the first case if the first type of selector is one that would change label when you toggle it.