John GruberHow to write a Cancel dialog box without using “Cancel” as a button name. Good labels.
Reese Ricci Armstrong 
@gruber Don't love how not now is bolded though, almost draws my eye away from confirm
Matthew Janssen 
@reesericci @gruber I think it’s fairly standard for the non-destructive action to be the default button.
dimsumthinking@gruber omg the cancel the cancel is so confusing
St. Chris
@dimsumthinking @gruber As it happens, I also have this screenshot from the previous year’s version of the app.
dxzdb@FormerlyStC @dimsumthinking What app is this?
@gruber It’s the Great Clips hair salon app. The dialog still looks like this right now.
Paul McGrane@FormerlyStC @gruber that sure is a nightmare
Hyperlink Your Heart@FormerlyStC @gruber Ah so you click cancel to cancel confirming the cancellation.
Kaito@dimsumthinking @gruber they cancelled the cancel button
shac ron ₪@gruber Are you sure you want to cancel your subscription? Yes / No
Damien Sorresso
Ölbaum@oscherler @shac Verbs as a rule of thumb. But “Not Now” is a good alternative to “Cancel” but isn’t technically a verb.
Zorro Notorious MEB 🪷🪷🪷@gruber When the only two responses to an "offer" are "Yes" and "Maybe Later", I have taken to reporting the offer as offensive. They know better; someone has convinced them to do that.
Mark Whybird@AlgoCompSynth @gruber I hear you, and it often feels like a consent thing… BUT in the case of a cancellation, it’s almost the opposite. You are not committing to stay forever, you are just not cancelling *now*.
@AlgoCompSynth I don’t think you should be offended by that. Yes, it’s true, you might know for certain that you will never be interested. But saying “Maybe Later” is not merely euphemistic — it conveys the important information that if you change your mind you can do it later. Dismissing it now does not close the door. For some choices that’s not true, it’s now or never.
@gruber I want the right to say, "I have neither the budget nor the use for your product / service and I never will. Please leave me alone." Or just plain "No".
I used to work in telemarketing. We were trained to keep the person on the line and rebut every excuse. That wastes everyone's time.
@gruber I want the option to reject an offer permanently.
@AlgoCompSynth But this thread is about confirming the cancellation of a subscription. "Not Now" is all you need for deciding not to confirm. "Never" would be terrible in this context.
@gruber I have similar gripes with cancellation dialogs, which I've encountered frequently the past few weeks as I migrate off of cloud and streaming services. It's fine to ask "are you sure?" once, but any more than that, any attempts to cajole you into staying are again, a waste of my time.
I have made my decision - from the Latin, "to cut off" - and I want the service to accept that!.
Greg Maletic
Sean@Gregmaletic Is that for real?
@gruber It is in fact for real. (I won’t out the developer here.) :)
@Gregmaletic @gruber a real-world contender for /r/badUIbattles/ !
itgrrl 
@gruber please let’s not normalise the habit of not offering ‘no’ (or “fuck off!”) as one of the available options 🤢
Stuart McHattie 👨🏼💻@sdjmchattie @gruber yeah I guess you’re right, I replied quickly & didn’t properly grok the original context ¯(ツ)/¯
I hope my outrage at faux choices in dialogs still came through 🙃
Eshu Marneedi@gruber Perhaps this should change from “always” to “in most cases.” From Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines:
Kichu
Dusty Pomerleau@gruber I think we should go with Proceed and Abort, and the text of the dialog should always begin with "You have been assigned the mission of…"
Thom McGrath@gruber It’s a clear dialog, but I was taught that the default button should always mirror the originally intended action. So in the case of a cancellation, the default should be “cancel” and the alternate would need to be something else, such as “not yet” or “don’t cancel.” This is similar to a delete confirmation, which might have “delete” as the default and “cancel” as the alternate.
@tekcor As a rule of thumb you are correct, but for cancelling a subscription or something, the verb “cancel” is too hopelessly overloaded. Avoiding it for *both* buttons completely removes any ambiguity as to whether you are cancelling the subscription or merely dismissing the dialog without action.
Michael Heilemann@gruber Hardest problem in design.
Ric Santos@gruber I feel the pain... thanks for the tip, will review the copy on this monstrosity of mine
Jay
@jaydisc Whoever made that one should have served some time in prison for shipping that.