So, radio boxes then…

I think rectangle switch with active light on one end is good. I believe the confused one people talking about is the rounded slide toggle whose body color is used as status (the bolt head left right is equivalent to meaning nothing)

Checkboxes stay winning.

The latter generally works for sum type states.

It's not when desirability of fnurbification negatively correlates to other items, i.e. when following is normal config:

  [X] perform deconbinaturation 
  [X] disable fnurbification 
  [X] enable entrapollation

... in this case there is a reason to make it a "positive-disable".

Nope, just mark which config is default and add tooltip explaining to user why it might need to be changed.

Aiming for all options to be "on" or "off" is some pedantic nightmare that makes settings harder to navigate

> Aiming for all options to be "on" or "off" is some pedantic nightmare that makes settings harder to navigate

This probably stems from config files or in-app defaults where a feature is default-on and so the existence of a value means something is disabled. And then some dev comes along and mindlessly transcribes a bunch of boolean flags into a settings menu and here we are.

To make matters worse, a disabled checkbox is one you can't toggle.

Not sure we are on the same page, the two lines is only for demonstration, the real ui is going to have that one line at a time. And the latter is custom radio button, I think it's up to 5 short name items before consider making it a dropdown.

You mean:

  ( ) enable fnurbification
  (o) disable fnurbification

There are many instances where the default is set at enable fnurbifucation with white text on a black background. Disable is shown as black text on a white background. When you change the state the text and background color inverts.

There is no way of knowing for certain what position is on and what is off without assuming that the first displayed state is on.

I believe recently I setup a nest with this issue. There is no way of knowing what is specifically selected unless there are three options. With three exclusive options you can compare to determine what the current state is because two of them will look the same thus must be off.

Ti-89 93... calculator settings can have this issue but some of the options have 3+ states and once you see the schema it's quite easy to deal with.