What UI first distinguished radio buttons from checkboxes with circles/squares?
30 comments
·June 26, 2025pavlov
true_religion
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.
aidos
More crucially, when did we lose the ability to click and hold on the first checkbox and then drag down the list to set them all the same way!
> 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.
jfengel
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.
mewpmewp2
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?
earthnail
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.
exiguus
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.
yokljo
Blender does this. It's sick.
exiguus
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).
smallstepforman
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.
Tmpod
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.
hedora
Unlabeled slider switches were never particularly common.
For instance, my old stereo has push button toggles, where “in” means “on” (this convention was common because of how those switches work), and three way levers with labels on two of the three positions (there’s no space to label the middle position, and it means “default”.
nkrisc
That is why they are called "radio buttons".
Waterluvian
That’s precisely the metaphor. A radio as in the radio station presets in your car.
discostrings
Push button light switches that had two circular buttons with this behavior also used to be extremely common.
fainpul
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.
myself248
No they didn't. My first car had a Blaupunkt radio with buttons that worked like that, but they were rectangular.
hedora
I think turning the tuning knob typically popped out the preset button, and holding the button down while turning the tuning knob changed the preset. I think this could be done with a loop of string (to control where the dial arrow was) and few springs and catches (to pull the string into position when the button was pressed).
I can’t imagine how the mechanism would work if each preset knob was a tuning knob.
oneeyedpigeon
Our first TV was like this too - before remote controls.
teddyh
ISTR a discussion in Tog on Interface on the design choices available, with visual examples. This seems to indicate that the choice was made there.
RodgerTheGreat
You're thinking of a discussion about a hypothetical variant of the radio button, a "one or more" UI element. Discussion here on Lobste.rs:
https://lobste.rs/s/v6mkz6/implementing_one_more_ui_componen...
block_dagger
What UI uses circles with checkmarks in them as “OK” buttons? iOS 26. Facepalm.
johnisgood
Can I see a screenshot of that? Sounds weird.
wqweto
And Delphi
1oooqooq
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.
Tmpod
Yeah, it has been prompting me with CF CAPTCHAS almost every time lately. Didn't use to do that, a few months ago.
hedora
Ouch. Can confirm.
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.
rrr_oh_man
> I really wonder what the PM’s are thinking.
Increase number of app downloads
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.