A trash can instead of swiping

Swipe-left-to-delete is gone from Hobba. That sounds like a small thing — behind it sits the biggest rework since the beta launch.

The problem: two gestures, one finger

In Hobba you can drag almost everything: tasks, projects, whole sections, favorite tiles, cards on the kanban board. And next to all that sat the classic swipe-left-to-delete. Two gestures on the same surface, sharing the same finger movement — people who wanted to drag sometimes swiped, people who wanted to swipe dragged. And the board never had the swipe in the first place: deleting was a different ritual depending on where you stood.

The idea: deleting isn't a command, it's a place

Instead of yet another gesture, deleting gets a destination. As soon as something hangs on your finger, the “+” in the bottom corner turns into a red trash can. Come closer and its lid flips open — and the dragged row shrinks into a glass marble that snaps into place above the open lid. Let go, plop, gone. With the usual confirmation or Undo.

Why a marble? Because you don't throw a table row into a can. A marble, you do. The transformation tells your finger what's about to happen — before it happens.

One way for everything

That's the real win: there is now exactly one answer to “how do I delete this?” — drag it into the can. Tasks, projects, sections, favorite tiles, board cards, even whole board columns. The same motion everywhere, the same picture everywhere. A deleted column doesn't take its tasks to the grave, by the way — they just become “loose” and stay in the project.

And the other swipe actions?

The swipe also used to be the way to a few other actions. Those now live in the menu — which opens by holding still: hold and drag to reorder, hold without moving to open the menu. One starting gesture, two clean endings. The Mac, meanwhile, speaks Mac: right-click for the menu — and reordering there now works without any wait, just click and drag.

Whether this was the right call isn't decided by my gut but by the beta. That's why Build 30's changelog literally asks: do you miss the swipe? If you do — write me. That's what the beta is for.