Should a toggle button show its current state or the state to which it will change?

starman@programming.dev to Programming@programming.dev – 99 points –
Should a toggle button show its current state or the state to which it will change?
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This would be correct if the post was about switches (which TBF many people made that mistake, including me initially), but it's about buttons - buttons should show what action will result from clicking on them. e.g. "Cancel" on a button which is going to cancel your process. For a play/pause button it should show play if you're paused (if I click on this it will start playing) and pause if you're playing (if I click on this it will pause).

oh yeah true, I was thinking of toggle buttons instead of buttons that keep their state/don't release: like the formatting buttons (bold, italic, underline, ...) in a word processor. The latter strangely are also named ToggleButtons so that's a big confusion.

Yeah, the wording isn't clear, and some people are talking about switches and some people are talking about buttons. I work with MAUI, and in MAUI a "ToggleButton" is called a Switch, so there's no confusion there, but the OP specifically said a button which toggles. i.e. a button which has 2 states instead of just one. A play button which turns into a pause button when you press it and vice-versa. I think the OP may have been confused between switches and buttons themselves - which are indeed labelled in opposite ways to each other (switch - current state, button - state that it will cause to happen when pressed) - which led to the question.