Improve visibility of More actions menu button

I agree that this is an accessibility issue. Plus: this is also a serious editor UX issue. We've observed that even experienced Drupal users struggle with locating the dots. The concept of a "three dots menu" is established in development communities but very uncommon to "outsiders" (our largest target groups).

We would be able to mitigate those downers by adding a secondary button style border and un-hiding the button text ("More actions"). But overriding the CSS (e.g. with a CSS injector) is extra-hard with the given enforced specificity.

Therefore I'd consider this issue a Bug report.

:is(#extra-specificity-hack, .gin--core-navigation [data-drupal-admin-styles]).gin--navigation-top-bar .toolbar-button.toolbar-button--icon--dots { width: auto; } 
:where(#extra-specificity-hack, [data-drupal-admin-styles]) [data-toolbar-action].visually-hidden { all: revert; }

etc - happy hacking! :-/

Alternatives:

• Make moving the "tabs menu" to a 3-dots-menu a configurable option in the Navigation settings.
• Introduce a dedicated region (e.g. header_dots_menu) and empower site builders to decide where to place Primary/Secondary tabs

Yep I agree with the two of you, @kentr and @hexabinaer. The main problem for desktop viewports imho is that the area the person editing the form is focused on is the form in the center of the screen while the advanced sidebar toggle button and the more actions button are not in close proximity but the upper right corner of the screen - the bigger the screen the larger the gap; in particular on widescreen monitors > 32inches this becomes a challenging distance. the toggle button is also drawing the attention away from the more actions button. To me personally, due to those two facts the more action button is close to invisible - out of sight out of mind. I always have to actively remind myself that there is a more action button in place wrapping all the links to the local tasks.

And it has to be noted on mobile, even in close proximity, the more actions button is also close to invisible (on the smartphone screen not zoomed in the screenshot - and on a sidenote the top bar on mobile is also rather visually cluttered and crammed)

Strictly speaking "node edit forms" and "user forms" are breaking with the common pattern and the expectation a user has in regard to local tasks in the admin ui - linking to "subsets" of the object at hand. For one, those local tasks are no CTAs which would be the semantically appropriate options for the more actions button and those local tasks are getting crammed into a homogenous list of options increasing the cognitive load to distinguish them (they are basically "masked" - a user has to read each of them). I am well aware that moving the local task to the contextual top bar was a deliberate choice, but I thought it was only intended for the front end to avoid any complications in regard to theming, for the backend i thought there wasn't that need and requirement.

Personally, I would simply keep displaying the local tasks on "node edit forms" and "user form" within the admin ui and don't move them as options to the more actions button. That way the structure of a node or a user object is clearly visibly, the local tasks are located and directly accessible right underneath the header, and no additional click is necessary to reach that currently homogenous list. The "more actions" button should be reserved for actual CTAs or contextual links. So i would simply display the "more actions" button in the front end for node edit forms and user forms and dont display the more actions button in the backend and display local tasks instead as usual. that way it would be consistent with the rest of the admin ui and wouldn't require any additional config form as suggest in #8 coming to the same outcome? But also stick to the proposed resolution to increase the dot size so that the more actions button is visible in the front end.

and it has to be noted that this issue is still on the short list for a ux meetings on friday. but we haven't got to it yet cuz we ran into two rabbit holes recently that were right before on the list.

Usability review

We discussed this issue at #3581812: Drupal Usability Meeting 2026-04-03. The link to the recording: https://youtu.be/LyBy7cDksSc?t=2074&si=kQIvZNB_2LIjpONP . The attendees at the usability meeting were @nicxvan, @rkoller, @simohell, and @worldlinemine.

In general the group agreed to the issue summary, that there is a lack of visibility for the More Actions button. As already illustrated in #9, on desktop viewports, by having three thin dots in the upper right corner of the screen right next to the toggle button for expanding/collapsing the advanced sidebar, that toggle button takes away all the attention and the More Actions button goes more or less unnoticed without any affordance - which is in particular a problem on large widescreen displays. While on smartphone viewports, the three dots are aligned underneath to the left border of the advanced sidebar icon, so again it is very challenging to recognize that there is a button at all.

The measure the group agreed on, aside the proposed resolution in the issue summary to increase the size of the dots, is to recommend the addition of for example a border to the button (*another option might be to add a background color instead of a border - not raised during the meeting) - basically to make it visually more clear and apparent that the More Actions button is an actual button.

On a related note but out of the scope for this issue. In the frontend the More Actions button is required in any way due to the fact that local tasks got moved into the More Actions button to avoid any interferences between the front and backend theme in theming, but in the backend moving those local tasks into the More Actions button is unnecessary and leads to an additional click to reach the list of available options / local task. Moving the local tasks into the More Actions button is also inconsistent with the rest of the admin pages and it removes the ability to see with the glimpse of an eye if for example a content type has revisions enabled, if a node supports translations and so on. Local tasks provide the user the situational awareness and context, and they make those links directly accessible in close proximity to the node edit form where the focus of attention lies - and the local tasks are faster to reach by keyboard, mouse, or pointer device, consistent with the rest of the admin ui, and don't take up that much vertical space anyway.

So our recommendation for a followup would be to move those local tasks out of the More Actions button into local tasks on pages in the admin ui. Also one of the conclusion we came up with during our evaluation of the content moderation module in #3578994: Drupal Usability Meeting 2026-03-20 as well (see #3578994-12: Drupal Usability Meeting 2026-03-20)

If you want more feedback from the usability team, a good way to reach out is in the #ux channel in Slack.

Funny how the mobile screenshot shows a direct comparison with CKEditor's "Show more items" toggle:

1. Stronger dots = better contrast
2. "Intelligent" hiding: all buttons are visible unless there's not enough space - and only when buttons do not fit in the available space they move to the tree-dots menu. Almost self-explaining to those who have ever resized the browser window during editing.