# Why has logout moved

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-has-logout-moved/165477
**Category:** UX
**Created:** [September 26, 2020, 8:39pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-has-logout-moved/165477 "2020-09-26T20:39:38Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![rogerco](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/rogerco/32/161338_2.png) [@rogerco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/rogerco)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2020, 8:39pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-has-logout-moved/165477/1 "2020-09-26T20:39:38Z")

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It used to be that to logout I had to click on my icon in top right and then on my name and then logout appeared in the menu list.  
Now in 2.6 my name has gone (which is a bit of a nuisance if I have two or more logins to a forum (eg as an admin, as myself and as a test user) and I find that logout has moved to the cog menu (which used to mean preferences) which isn’t really a meaningful icon for what is listed there (which includes another cog icon that does mean preferences - this is a more generic use of the cog icon - settings or preferences)  
Logout is not a setting or preference - it is an action. Also Summary, Activity and Drafts are not Settings.

If it is really felt that it is not a good idea to remind the user of his username and it needs to be replaced with an icon, then how about using a user icon (little head and shoulders outline) rather than a cog (which, I insist, most commonly means settings or preferences)

What is the reason for the change and can we have it reversed as not a terribly good idea?

Even better give me a simple logout button only one click away instead of two.

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### Author: ![Canapin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/canapin/32/119591_2.png) [@Canapin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Canapin)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2020, 8:44pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-has-logout-moved/165477/2 "2020-09-26T20:44:16Z")

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It was discussed here: [A click too many: logging out - #3 by codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/t/a-click-too-many-logging-out/130615/3)

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### Author: ![Stephen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/stephen/32/95011_2.png) [@Stephen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Stephen)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2020, 10:02pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-has-logout-moved/165477/3 "2020-09-26T22:02:39Z")

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I would encourage using a separate browser, browser profile, or incognito session for test accounts.

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### Author: ![merefield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/merefield/32/176214_2.png) [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2020, 6:23am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-has-logout-moved/165477/4 "2020-09-27T06:23:48Z")

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> [@rogerco](#):
>
> Even better give me a simple logout button only one click away instead of two.

> [@Add logout button to top menu](https://meta.discourse.org/t/add-logout-button-to-top-menu/143250/5):
>
> I got it! I won’t promise that it’ll work for you, but this might do it for you. This is common/header.html \<script type="text/discourse-plugin" version="0.8"\> const { iconNode } = require("discourse-common/lib/icon-library"); const { logout } = require("discourse/lib/logout"); api.decorateWidget("header-buttons:before", helper =\> { if (!Discourse.User.current()) return; currentUser = Discourse.User.current(); let container = api.container, lo…

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### Author: ![rogerco](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/rogerco/32/161338_2.png) [@rogerco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/rogerco)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2020, 8:04am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-has-logout-moved/165477/5 "2020-09-27T08:04:30Z")

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Thanks for the link.

> [@Canapin](#):
>
> It was discussed here: [A click too many: logging out](https://meta.discourse.org/t/a-click-too-many-logging-out/130615/3)

I strongly agree with the OP there.

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### Author: ![rogerco](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/rogerco/32/161338_2.png) [@rogerco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/rogerco)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2020, 8:08am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-has-logout-moved/165477/6 "2020-09-27T08:08:28Z")

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> [@Stephen](#):
>
> I would encourage using a separate browser, browser profile, or incognito session for test accounts.

A bit off topic perhaps but could you briefly explain why? I don’t mean a test account in the sense of code development, more in the sense of an account that is used to test the user experience with different permissions, user settings etc. Rather than impersonating a real user on a live system.

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### Author: ![rogerco](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/rogerco/32/161338_2.png) [@rogerco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/rogerco)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2020, 8:11am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-has-logout-moved/165477/7 "2020-09-27T08:11:33Z")

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ooo, interesting, thank you. Does it still work in 2.6? I thought you couldn’t put script in the header html any more but it had to go in a javascripts folder

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### Author: ![Stephen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/stephen/32/95011_2.png) [@Stephen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Stephen)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2020, 8:13am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-has-logout-moved/165477/8 "2020-09-27T08:13:46Z")

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Because you don’t need to log out to test other accounts. Your browser already includes features which will let you see the interface from different user sessions simultaneously.

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### Author: ![merefield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/merefield/32/176214_2.png) [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2020, 9:15am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-has-logout-moved/165477/9 "2020-09-27T09:15:09Z")

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You’ll need to ask the author 🙂

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### Author: ![Canapin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/canapin/32/119591_2.png) [@Canapin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Canapin)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2020, 10:00am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-has-logout-moved/165477/10 "2020-09-27T10:00:21Z")

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Are you talking about the impersonate feature or another thing I missed? 🤔

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### Author: ![pfaffman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/pfaffman/32/120154_2.png) [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2020, 10:44am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-has-logout-moved/165477/11 "2020-09-27T10:44:27Z")

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> [@rogerco](#):
>
> Even better give me a simple logout button only one click away instead of two.

Typing` ZZ` will log you out.

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### Author: ![rogerco](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/rogerco/32/161338_2.png) [@rogerco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/rogerco)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2020, 11:08am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-has-logout-moved/165477/12 "2020-09-27T11:08:08Z")

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ZZ but not on a touch device where the keyboard only appears when editing (and anyway a post has to be 20+ chars)  
Also on a touch screen tapping multiple tiny menu icons to find logout can be tricky and switch browser config difficult/impossible.  
On a mobile device is precisely when you don’t want to stay logged in for security reasons, a good reason for a simple button.

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![riking](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/riking/32/170938_2.png) [@riking](https://meta.discourse.org/u/riking)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2020, 12:46pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-has-logout-moved/165477/13 "2020-09-27T12:46:15Z")

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Incognito tabs keep separate cookie jars, which means you can have two accounts side-by-side.

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### Author: ![Canapin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/canapin/32/119591_2.png) [@Canapin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Canapin)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2020, 12:57pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-has-logout-moved/165477/14 "2020-09-27T12:57:25Z")

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Ah, yes, I misread and thought stephen was talking about a discourse feature, not a browser feature.

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### Author: ![awesomerobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/awesomerobot/32/142900_2.png) [@awesomerobot](https://meta.discourse.org/u/awesomerobot)
#### Post date: [September 28, 2020, 7:01pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-has-logout-moved/165477/15 "2020-09-28T19:01:05Z")

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Why it moved is covered here:

> [@Please make user settings easier for users to find](https://meta.discourse.org/t/please-make-user-settings-easier-for-users-to-find/161334):
>
> I’ve been experimenting with Discourse for two weeks, and I’ve always struggled to find the user settings page until just now. Apparently I’m supposed to click my photo (in the upper-right corner), then click the small “person” button next to my name, and then I’m shown a menu of choices: summary, activity…preferences. Before this, for the last two weeks, I was madly clicking around and navigating backward and resorting to browser history. I previously had gotten to user settings accidentally…

The main reason is that we had reports that it was unclear your username was a clickable button, which lead to people having a hard time finding log out and their preferences specifically. I haven’t heard of many issues with discovering the clickable tabs in the menu, so going that way seemed best.

I agree that the gear icon isn’t the best representation of everything under the menu (would a user icon be clearer? I’m a little skeptical). The gear icon is very clear for preferences of course, and it’s not unusual for other sites to put the log out link under a gear icon either (Facebook is one common example).

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### Author: ![rogerco](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/rogerco/32/161338_2.png) [@rogerco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/rogerco)
#### Post date: [September 28, 2020, 7:26pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-has-logout-moved/165477/16 "2020-09-28T19:26:19Z")

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Thanks Kris, that makes sense. Of course Facebook has a commercial interest in making it hard for users to log out - which might be the case for some Discourse instances, but others may want to actively encourage their users to log out (hence my preference for an always visible, or at worst one-click-away button).  
I wonder if I could add a tab to the person menu with a plugin. With the icons there is room for at least one more tab. The new tab would have an exit icon (?door-open) and one entry (Logout). Still three clicks to exit from any page though, and sometimes it is important to be able to exit quickly.  
A plugin to add the exit button in the header is best, but on the main site I’m involved with we already have four additional header icons, so have to drop one on the mobile screen. Still I think this will be the way we’ll go.

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### Author: ![anon23840344](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4bbf92/32.png) [@anon23840344](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon23840344)
#### Post date: [September 28, 2020, 7:59pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-has-logout-moved/165477/17 "2020-09-28T19:59:22Z")

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> [@awesomerobot](#):
>
> I agree that the gear icon isn’t the best representation of everything under the menu (would a user icon be clearer? I’m a little skeptical). The gear icon is very clear for preferences of course, and it’s not unusual for other sites to put the log out link under a gear icon either (Facebook is one common example).

I love the improvement of however it looked before, that layout made now sense to me.

I think the current gear icon is fine, and I think a person icon or a wrench icon or a hamburger icon in its place would be fine too (if you’d like a random user’s opinion).

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![pfaffman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/pfaffman/32/120154_2.png) [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [September 28, 2020, 9:20pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-has-logout-moved/165477/20 "2020-09-28T21:20:27Z")

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I have a client whose users are likely to use public access computers. I created a theme component that adds a logout button to the top bar. I was going to share it, but it also has some other stuff.

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### Author: ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/codinghorror/32/110067_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [September 28, 2020, 11:57pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-has-logout-moved/165477/22 "2020-09-28T23:57:47Z")

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> [@awesomerobot](#):
>
> I agree that the gear icon isn’t the best representation of everything under the menu (would a user icon be clearer? I’m a little skeptical). The gear icon is very clear for preferences of course, and it’s not unusual for other sites to put the log out link under a gear icon either (Facebook is one common example).

Yeah I’m not super happy with the gear icon there TBH. Would reproducing the user avatar there make more sense? It’s all sort of “my stuff” under “my account”.

I like @falco’s suggestion of changing assign to the checkmark, then you are clear to use @Johani’s suggestion of user+cog. Honestly it could be just the user icon maybe?

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![awesomerobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/awesomerobot/32/142900_2.png) [@awesomerobot](https://meta.discourse.org/u/awesomerobot)
#### Post date: [September 29, 2020, 12:39am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-has-logout-moved/165477/23 "2020-09-29T00:39:33Z")

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ok, let’s try the user icon… duplicating the avatar so closely looks a little off to me. The lone user icon is more distinct from the current assign icon than user-cog is.

 ![Screen Shot 2020-09-28 at 8.25.00 PM](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/9/9/993b553636bf7b3c0120092e2dd7ea6c793e30ed.png) ![Screen Shot 2020-09-28 at 8.24.05 PM](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/7/6/76f69b0a61cbce89fc3644ce3f09d462884ad12d.png)

My worry about changing the assign icon to the [tasks icon](https://fontawesome.com/icons/tasks?style=solid) is… it makes sense in the context of this menu, but using a different icon in only one place weakens the association with all other occurrences of assign:

![Screen Shot 2020-09-28 at 8.29.19 PM](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/8/e/8e286a6d7d7f581d34abb6d147b7ff6d87c98da2.png)

 ![Screen Shot 2020-09-28 at 8.31.26 PM](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/4/8/485d2e83fe05a0e4124ff8e9706944e7c6d1321d.png) ![Screen Shot 2020-09-28 at 8.31.33 PM](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/6/b/6b1d264ce0116bf3ec39f4210e28f23632f24a2f.png)

![Screen Shot 2020-09-28 at 8.35.00 PM](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/c/f/cf362f968307d3a9bdb3d2ea299d9685b643a189.png)

We could make a rule that says… if you’re _assigning_ use the `user-plus` icon, but if you’re _viewing assignments_, use the `tasks` icon. But that feels like a weaker pattern than “this icon means `assign` everywhere”…

[Next page](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-has-logout-moved/165477.md?page=2)