Confirm what can’t be taken back; act at once and offer Undo for frequent edits that can.
Best practices
- Reversible and frequent, such as removing a line or archiving a record: do it now and offer Undo in a toast.
- Irreversible, such as deleting a record or resetting data: an alert with the consequence and a red, specific button (“Delete Project”), with Cancel beside it (R5).
- Destructive buttons are never the prominent style and never the default for Return.
- Report what happened afterwards, with counts: “3 projects deleted”, “Couldn’t delete: check your connection”.
- Bulk actions say how many things they affect, before and after.