States

A change in color is the primary way that a state is communicated. Colors follow a standard progression for user-initiated states: default, hover, down, and keyboard focus. There are minor updates to the styles of disabled, selected, and dragged states, and these are all component options.

Decorative graphic depicting toggle and button shapes with a cursor icon on a gradient background.
Row of four labeled buttons demonstrating default, hover, pending, and disabled states.
Button in hover state with cursor nearby.

Down state

In Spectrum 2, some components use a change in size instead of color to communicate a down state. This gives the illusion of objects being pressed-in, and makes interactions more dynamic and responsive.

Disabled UI components shown in muted gray, including a circular avatar photo, a labeled button, a toggle switch with label, and a checkbox with label.

Disabled state

Disabled states generally stay the same from Spectrum 1, but there have been some minor updates to specific components. For example, a text field retains the outline style when disabled, to more closely match its default state.

Two checkboxes with 'Label' text: the top one unchecked, the bottom one checked with a black background and white checkmark.

Selected state

Selected states use a primary style by default, generally through a gray-800 fill. Some have an accent color option that can be used to draw emphasis. This is primarily helpful in contexts with a specific and narrowly-scoped goal (for example, in a dialog), or when there’s a single, clear call to action within a page (for example, a “Create” button).

When there’s many groups of controls that require the same amount of attention (such as in a panel) the not emphasized option works best. For more details about this concept, view Attention hierarchy.

A list view row being dragged, indicated by a grabbing-hand cursor above it, containing a checked checkbox, a circular avatar placeholder, truncated title text 'List view value with a longer la...', description text, two circular icons, and a chevron.

Dragged state

A dragged state has a unique drop shadow to draw attention to the dragged object. Learn more about drop shadows.