Ask HN: Single-Click Only OS?

4 points·herodoturtle··7 comments

Could we design an OS user interface that does not require double-clicking ever?

I imagine we'd have to rethink some habits, like opening folders, or executing executables.

But double-clicking strikes me as suboptimal, and I suspect that an OS which prioritised single-clicking would be superior.

Or at the very least more elegant.

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Don't mess with people's muscle memory. I double-click because that's all I've ever known. The double-click means you consent to open a file. The consent is baked into the UX.

Windows at some point (maybe still) had a mode where you could open things with one click instead of two. Not sure if that made it so that literally everything could be done with a single click, but it might have come close.

It still exists, it can be enabled by opening Folder Explorer -> Options -> Folder options, General tab -> Single-click to open an item (point to select).

Aren't most mobile OSes like this already?

>Or at the very least more elegant.

More elegant IMO would be reserving pointing devices for very spacial tasks: rearranging windows, drawing, clicking in hypertext etc. With keyboard shortcuts for all of these of course.

KDE Plasma? Pretty sure you can change this setting in Windows, even.

My OS does not ever "require" double-clicking. An application with poor UI might require this, but I would quickly look for a better program.

Like Android/iOS?

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