Hide actions that are currently inaccessible or irrelevant to the actor.
Related components
Context menus & toolbars: only displaying actions relevant to the current selection or state rather than disabling irrelevant items.
Edge cases
Situation when actors need to understand the full range of potential actions to establish a clear mental model.
Accessibility concerns
Removing UI elements entirely (e.g., changing layout structure) might negatively impact assistive technology.
Consequences
- the surface carries only what applies, so nothing the actor can see is unusable
- an action never shown is an action the actor may not know exists, which puts the full range of what's possible somewhere other than the current context or nowhere at all
- hiding changes the layout, so the same surface has a different shape in different states — which spatial memory and assistive technology both read as things moving
Related patterns
Alternatives
- Disabled state — hiding options is an alternative to showing them disabled
Related
- Progressive disclosure — a softer form: deferring rather than removing
Preceded by
- Command menu — the menu shows only what applies here, so commands that don't apply are absent rather than visibly out of reach — which is a kindness for the irrelevant ones and a mystery for the ones the actor expected to find