Settings & preferences

Guidelines for writing clear, user-friendly labels and descriptions for settings and preferences.

Write labels in the affirmative

Preferences and settings should always be written in the affirmative—even if the preference is meant to disable a feature. When a user checks a feature preference, they should be getting that feature.

Don't

Do

Use descriptions to explain

Descriptions are optional and can supplement a label in a few ways:

  • Further define a label
  • Explain how the input will be used
  • Show an example of a valid input

Avoid using tooltips.

Don't

Do

Describes the site in the product, emails, integrations, and logs.

This is automatically generated. You only need to manually set this if you're reinstalling the app.

Add up to 4.

Don’t rely on placeholder text

Placeholder text can be used to show an example of a valid input.

Placeholder text disappears once a character is typed in the input, so the user should be able to complete their task without placeholder text always visible.

Don't

Do

Must be https

Add up to 2 roles