> Maybe "toasts" aren't the bee's knees, but they work as lagging indicator that something happened that I otherwise wouldn't notice, and in some apps even lets me undo the unwanted operation. That does a lot to relieve my anxiety and help me use software with less frustration.

All things that a message log does better than toasts!

Why not both? A message log can always be consulted later, but it doesn't give you a live feed of things that are happening.

I'm also ADHD and, like OP, I appreciate having the stream of toasts that lets me know what the software did. It's saved my butt a bunch of times when I accidentally do something I didn't mean to (deleting instead of archiving, for example). A message log would just get ignored, but toasts help a ton because they're visible.

A message log can also be visible...? The only differences between messages in toasts vs messages in a log is that toasts control the user rather than the other way around.

Isn't a toast just the tail of a message log that's visible for a few seconds after a new message is added? I don't always want the entire log to be occupying space on my screen, but I do want to see when new items get added.

The problem is that everyone implements toasts, and no one implements the message log, even though it's the latter that's more important to have.

Exactly - a toast is, at best, a nice add-on to a message log. Although I maintain a well implemented message log already serves every single purpose toasts do, better.

I don't even know if I'm neurodivergent, but apps that optimistically indicate success instead of using spinners give me a ton of anxiety. I see that in my wife and other family members, too. Even looking at something that explicitly says "Your order has been placed!" leaves people in a state of nervous suspense until we find a text message or an email to verify. In the absence of that, they just don't know. Part of my techie privilege is that I know a page refresh can usually reveal the truth.

> Even looking at something that explicitly says "Your order has been placed!" leaves people in a state of nervous suspense until we find a text message or an email to verify.

This. Also true for both my wife and me. One of the worst offenders here are contact forms - it's increasingly rare you get any copy or confirmation via e-mail that your message was actually recorded, so once you submit the form and see a success page, you really can't be sure if your message was delivered, or even if it left your browser in the first place. Takes one little JavaScript fuckup for the message to be lost, and your only indication may be an error message in development console.

Related, at one of my previous employer's, there were some documents I was interested in that had restricted access; when trying to open them, I'd get an access request form asking me to provide a reason. I filled it several times over couple of months, but never got any reply. Then one day, I mentioned it randomly to my boss, to which he told me that this form just goes straight to /dev/null...