My hunch is that the square vs. circle convention is derived from paper forms.
The checkbox has been a common design element in forms for a long time. But people can of course tick off all boxes.
So when form designers needed to emphasize that you should only select one option, they often used a group of non-boxed options together with instruction copy that read “Circle one” (or similar).
The name “radio button” of course comes from physical buttons, but those were often square. So I think the specific circular shape is actually derived from circling an option on paper.
I had once thought the circle shape came from scantron style examination papers, where you can only fill one circle at a time. It’s similar even if the origins are probably different.
Radio buttons were also often round. The age of radio (and phenolics) was full of over-inflated round shapes.
But also, when you have a dozen monochromatic pixels to work with, 'square' and 'round' are pretty much the only usefully distinct shapes. Checkboxes were square for obvious reasons, so to distinguish a similar set of controls, you pretty much have to use a circle.
I'm pretty sure these concepts moved directly from physical systems to digital ones. Every person alive then knew what an empty square next to a line of text meant, and everyone understood the concept of ganged push-buttons. Just map it onto a pixel grid and you're good to go
On iOS you can swipe with two fingers to select multiple rows. One of the more hidden features. Mentioning it to show that we didn’t lose it everywhere.
What comes close are multi-select patterns. Often drop-downs where you can use the ALT-Key or dragging to select one or more items. Basically the same as in your beloved file-explorer and the list view.
To archive a select all, usually there is a "select all" checkbox.
I don't know when I would use that. If that's something a user would do often I probably want some other design component.
In part it's because I don't like check boxes. They don't have great feedback about what's going to happen. If I designed a UI where someone is likely to check a lot of boxes, I would feel I had done something very wrong.
Sometimes it's unavoidable and so the framework might as well allow it. And as a user, designers often do things I wouldn't have. But I can say I don't miss having that feature.
Maybe when you have e.g. a list of items/pictures/datasets you want to select to perform some action with, e.g. download, export, or perform some bulk job on?
When I see UI radio buttons, I often think about old radios, dishwashers, or washing machines, where you had two or three buttons aligned, and when you press one, the other(s) pop up (if they are already down).
I actually had a radio with circular radio buttons, which would pop back when you selected another option. It had switches instead of check boxes.
The one that drives me crazy is slider based checkboxes. I never know which side is on/off. Bad UI convention.
And speaking of checkboxes, I want an actual tick mark (checkmark), not a X cross. Its called checkbox, not Xbox or crossbox, it has to be a checkmark. Also, its a square, not a box. Disaster.
You mean those toggles that are very common on settings pages (i.e. in Android/iOS)? If they are colored, they are very easy to parse, imo, but it never hurts to actually write "on"/"off".
Those toggles actually mimic real hardware that used to be fairly common. I find those should be preferred over checkboxes for anything that takes immediate effect. If they don't, and you're collecting a bunch of options at once, in a form, then use checkboxes.
iirc, radio buttons were an early form of bookmark in that one would rotate the tuner whose position was annotated by a scale marker, and when the radio was tuned as desired, one would pull the radio button, then push it in to set that button to that tuning. I have a memory of the tactile sensation in my fingers.
And those buttons needed to be round, because you could turn them to tune the radio or TV to a station. Pressing the button would then "snap" the tuner back to the preset position of the pressed button.
Ok, apparently there were different ways this was implemented. I remember a friends old TV as a child, where it worked exactly as I have described.
This is similar to what I mean, although it's a radio, not a TV and the buttons I remember where taller and had ridges on the side so they could be turned easily.
damn. stack overflow is gone for me. constantly logging me out (6 digits imaginary points) and showing me cloudflare annoyance almost every request. i guess i will just ask AIs trained on their content in the end.
Some paid services I’ve used for years have started aggressively automatically logging me out while I’m driving (eg when using the CarPlay app, which doesn’t include a login screen).
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The checkbox has been a common design element in forms for a long time. But people can of course tick off all boxes.
So when form designers needed to emphasize that you should only select one option, they often used a group of non-boxed options together with instruction copy that read “Circle one” (or similar).
The name “radio button” of course comes from physical buttons, but those were often square. So I think the specific circular shape is actually derived from circling an option on paper.
But also, when you have a dozen monochromatic pixels to work with, 'square' and 'round' are pretty much the only usefully distinct shapes. Checkboxes were square for obvious reasons, so to distinguish a similar set of controls, you pretty much have to use a circle.
I'm pretty sure these concepts moved directly from physical systems to digital ones. Every person alive then knew what an empty square next to a line of text meant, and everyone understood the concept of ganged push-buttons. Just map it onto a pixel grid and you're good to go
It's just one opinion versus another, but in my experience early radios often had round buttons. I'm thinking of the kind of radios that preceded TVs.
Cassette decks certainly had rectangular "one choice only" buttons, but those came along decades later.
> 1982: Dragging through a field of check-boxes flips the state of the first and assigns the new state to all other boxes dragged through.
In part it's because I don't like check boxes. They don't have great feedback about what's going to happen. If I designed a UI where someone is likely to check a lot of boxes, I would feel I had done something very wrong.
Sometimes it's unavoidable and so the framework might as well allow it. And as a user, designers often do things I wouldn't have. But I can say I don't miss having that feature.
Deleted Comment
The one that drives me crazy is slider based checkboxes. I never know which side is on/off. Bad UI convention.
And speaking of checkboxes, I want an actual tick mark (checkmark), not a X cross. Its called checkbox, not Xbox or crossbox, it has to be a checkmark. Also, its a square, not a box. Disaster.
Those toggles actually mimic real hardware that used to be fairly common. I find those should be preferred over checkboxes for anything that takes immediate effect. If they don't, and you're collecting a bunch of options at once, in a form, then use checkboxes.
And yes, radio buttons got their name from the push-button ganged switches that were ubiquitous on pre-digital radios.
This is similar to what I mean, although it's a radio, not a TV and the buttons I remember where taller and had ridges on the side so they could be turned easily.
https://herculodge.typepad.com/herculodge/2011/06/as-i-walke...
https://lobste.rs/s/v6mkz6/implementing_one_more_ui_componen...
https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/116712/apples-round-c...
(they're not the only offenders in this monstrosity)
Some paid services I’ve used for years have started aggressively automatically logging me out while I’m driving (eg when using the CarPlay app, which doesn’t include a login screen).
I really wonder what the PM’s are thinking.