Messages delete conversation dialog box swapped Delete and Cancel buttons

[verdi1987]

In macOS 11.3, in Messages they swapped the positions of the Delete and Cancel buttons on the Delete Conversation confirmation dialog. I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other except Cancel is still on the left on all the other dialog boxes.

macOS 11.3

Before macOS 11.3

 

[TheGeneralist]

I'd assume that's on purpose.
As users generally default to click the lower right if they click without thinking (...which happens quite often in reality), Apple tends to put destructive / security critical operations to the left, thus increasing the probability that the user "thinks twice" before performing such operations.

 

[verdi1987]

I'd assume that's on purpose.
As users generally default to click the lower right if they click without thinking (...which happens quite often in reality), Apple tends to put destructive / security critical operations to the left, thus increasing the probability that the user "thinks twice" before performing such operations.

Perhaps, but Apple has always put the confirmation on the right and still does on every other dialog box I could find. When emptying trash, "Cancel" is still on the left and "Empty Trash" is on the right.

 

[8CoreWhore]

They did this suddenly and it took me a long to to get used to it. The first week was a pain. Everything else has Delete on right side, why should this be any different?

 

[verdi1987]

They did this suddenly and it took me a long to to get used to it. The first week was a pain. Everything else has Delete on right side, why should this be any different?

I'm still trying to get used to it.

 

[TheGeneralist]

Perhaps, but Apple has always put the confirmation on the right and still does on every other dialog box I could find. When emptying trash, "Cancel" is still on the left and "Empty Trash" is on the right.

Yes, you‘re right.
Well, I’m not 100% sure what the intention really is. Of course this is just speculation from my side, but maybe they reckon things like emptying the trash (thus permanently removing item which have been sorted out as „delete-able“ before) as less destructive/critical than removing a whole conversation, which is maybe seen as a rare use case which should definitely not occur by accident.

I think the people telling here that they don’t get used to it show that this differentiation - if my speculation turns out to be correct - is at least working, because then the point and sense of this behavior would just be to avoid people getting used to it.

 

[luckman212]

Related and (for me) more annoying is that this delete confirmation can't be disabled. Sometimes I want to clean up/delete a bunch of old txts at once, and having to reach for the mouse and click that stupid button 1000x is absurd.

 

[verdi1987]

This is fixed (for now) in macOS Ventura. The proper order has been restored.