Labeling iOS’ Back Button

Neven Mrgan shares a solid piece of advice for iOS app designers and developers: A Back button labeled “Back” is never a good option.

As he notes, Apple never labels the “Back” button – the left-pointing arrow at the top of most iOS apps – “Back”. They provide context as to how a parent view (the previous screen) should be shown in the button’s label.

This is a widespread issue, present in many extremely popular apps.

This is redundant and it provides no context. Note that Apple never does this, not in any app. Instead, they provide either the full title of the previous view, or an abbreviated/truncated version of it.

He offers some do/don’t examples in his blog post. Here’s a series of screenshots from my iPhone, showing apps that correctly use the “Back” button:

One of my favorite examples, the Rdio app for iPhone:

And here’s Apple in the Apple Store app:

The button itself means “back”, so the additional “Back” label is not an option. These are the minor details that make great apps, well, great.