Checkboxes are just as usable as toggles on touchscreen. It doesn't have to do with the tech, it's just that toggles are newer.

I wouldn’t dare make comments on what’s more or less usable in an HN thread since everyone here is such an expert on these things.

Toggles came along with iOS when the UI was skeumorphic ca. 2008. Don’t know whether it has to do with tech, but that’s when we first got those.

As far as actual evidence, I do UX testing of a touchscreen/cursor application and we have both scattered throughout. I haven’t ever seen anyone have any difficulty understanding, using or differentiating between either. In our results this simply isn’t a problem with investigating.

> I haven’t ever seen anyone have any difficulty understanding, using or differentiating between either. In our results this simply isn’t a problem with investigating.

I'm not sure if this was meant as reassuring, but for me it only reinforces my view that UI/UX folks don't have a clue what they're doing.

Checkboxes can be just as usable but they're often smaller and often more tightly spaced, which can be a pain to navigate on a touchscreen.

I'm not saying that's a good reason, but it is a reason besides being newer.

Checkboxes are slightly problematic in touch UIs because they are generally scaled to a similar size as text and small enough that they are occluded by a fingertip. Sliders leak information about their state while you touch them.

Then why has macOS Ventura toggles all over the place, even though it's pointer-driven? (it's actually a wild mix of toggles and checkboxes in the new Settings UI)

There seems to be some logic behind it though: Toggles are often used alone to switch things on/off (for instance Wifi or Bluetooth), while checkboxes are often used in groups for "less important things". But maybe I'm just imagining that there's an actual reason behind it ;)

From https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

Switches

--------

Avoid using a switch to control a single detail or a minor setting. A switch has more visual weight than a checkbox, so it looks better when it controls more functionality than a checkbox typically does. For example, you might use a switch to let people turn on or off a group of settings, instead of just one setting.

In general, don't replace a checkbox with a switch. If you're already using a checkbox in your interface, it's probably best to keep using it.

Checkboxes

----------

A checkbox is a small square button that’s empty when the button is off, contains a checkmark when the button is on, and can contain a dash when the button’s state is mixed. Unless a checkbox appears in a checklist, a descriptive label follows the button.

Use a checkbox instead of a switch if you need to present a hierarchy of settings. The visual style of checkboxes helps them align well and communicate grouping. By using alignment — generally along the leading edge of the checkboxes — and indentation, you can show dependencies, such as when the state of a checkbox governs the state of subordinate checkboxes.

> In general, don't replace a checkbox with a switch.

Someone tell Apple's Settings team

Someone fire Apple's UI/UX team, and bring back the people from the Leopard era who actually understood the value of an understated, predictable and standardized UI.

It's been decades since Apple had competent compassionate trained UI designers instead of narcissistic showboating cosmeticians, who'd even heard of, let alone read or actually written, Apple's own Human Interface Guidelines from 1978 onward, and aren't just motivated and addled by cocaine and a burning desire to prove to the world they're actually sensitive artists joyfully expressing their deeply unique spiritual creativity to immortalize themselves in the historic pantheon next to Leonardo da Vinci, and not mere usability engineers navigating difficult tradeoffs and conventions and applying sound scientific principles so users can actually get work done, instead pointlessly changing and banishing practical pixels and affable affordances that were there for reasons they're blissfully unaware of, which they wouldn't give a shit about even if Bruce Tognazzini, Bill Atkinson, Don Norman, and the ghost of Jeff Raskin themselves begged them to, simply to polish their resumes and burnish their egos, by spraying their sweaty cloying musk over every possible surface merely to express their ownership, just like the Cat in Red Dwarf. [But I digress...]

Red Dwarf - The Cat - That be mine!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q54lVO7elt0

How Apple Is Giving Design A Bad Name (2015)

https://www.fastcompany.com/3053406/how-apple-is-giving-desi...

A history of Apple HIG table of contents – the philosophy and principles

https://modelessdesign.com/backdrop/401

Rediscovering Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines from 1987: UX Lessons from the Dawn of the Personal Computer

https://blog.prototypr.io/rediscovering-apples-human-interfa...

Because we have to phone-ify everything, whether it makes sense or not.

(Narrator: it never does)