Whether or not you realize it default settings on software is incredibly critical for users. For most users, having to change settings is too much friction to start using your software. Your software is only as good as it’s defaults.

Scenarios

Let’s say you are a beginner software user, you just bought your first computer. As far as you are aware, how the computer behaves out of the box is the only way it can behave. Good software with bad default settings is just bad software.

Let’s say you had this computer for a few more years. You have your favorite applications and websites, and you know how to do what you need to do for the most part. You might have realized that you can change the default search engine or theme on your browser, or maybe even switch the browser to something else that’s more you. By now, you probably enjoy your computer more because you know how to use it, and it’s customized a bit to your liking.

Me Problems

Then there’s me. I’ve given up using Windows in daily use, and I’ve settled into the linux distribution of my choice. You would think that surely the defaults didn’t matter too much, because on linux you can change anything and everything. Here’s the thing: even though I could, doesn’t mean I want to spend all of my free time changing all of the unwanted behaviors into wanted ones. I’m still a customer at the end of the day. And I still want software that just works the way I want it to out of the box. Each bad default setting that I have to change, is something that I have to do for every phone and computer. Also anytime I download new software.

It gets frustrating having to constantly change defaults to what I like. I’ve practically given up. There’s a reason why Google pays Apple and other web browser developing companies a absurd amount of money to stay the default. If they aren’t the default, a good amount of people probably wouldn’t care to switch back.

Unnecessary Friction

So, there you have it. This has been a short rant, on why I think software, open source or otherwise should think about which settings/behaviors should be default, and which ones should be hidden. It makes or breaks the experience at varying degrees for everyone, don’t let your efforts go to waste.

(This has also been a note to my future self not to do the things I dislike in other software products.)

Thanks for reading, have a great day!

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