Why my settings page has six things
A short defence of a settings page that does not grow.
The settings page in my product has six controls. It has had six for about a year. People ask, regularly, for me to add a seventh. I have added zero. The page is one of the parts of the product I am most confident about.
What is on it#
Your name. Your email. The language for the interface. A switch for weekly summary mail. A switch for showing your profile to other users. A button to delete your account.
Each of these is a thing a user has a reason to change. Each of them is a setting in the strict sense — a configuration of how the product behaves for one person.
What is not on it#
Anything that is a feature flag in disguise. Anything that should be a default rather than a toggle. Anything I added because a user asked for it without telling me what they were going to do with it. Most of what people request as settings are, on closer reading, requests for the product to make a better default decision.
How I decide#
A toggle earns its place if the user can describe, in one sentence, what they want to be true that the default is not. If they cannot, the setting is a wish for a different product rather than a configuration of this one.
What I have noticed#
A short settings page is not the absence of choice. It is the absence of choices the user does not need to make. The choices that matter are clearer, more visible, and more often correct than they would be on a page that hid them.