Options, Settings, Properties, Configuration, Preferences — when and why?

Question

Tricky, this, as there's no one single consistent style followed by all applications. As you say they are (broadly) synonyms.

In truth it doesn't really matter so long as your expected audience understands what you mean.

The biggest difference is between Properties, which usually affect a component or object, and the others, which affect the whole application.

Following an approximate lead from Visual Studio and other Microsoft products:

• Properties represent the characteristics of a single component or object in the application.
• Options alter global ways that the application works. Microsoft products use this to customise the UI toolbar, for example. There's an implication here that you can disable UI elements altogether (e.g. a "Simple" user interface or an "Advanced" user interface).
• Settings and Preferences change qualities of how the application works. The implication here is to change, not disable: for example, "Metric measurements" or "British Imperial measurements".
• Configuration is often where an application is customised for each user or group.

But there's no single rule.

I'd suggest you use Properties for object characteristics and Settings for everything else that's application-wide.

These aren't set anywhere, but I figured I might as well chip in my 2¢ on the topic. When I see these in an application, this is what they imply to me:

• Settings: "View or modify the list of things that can be set"
• Options: "We have set some things already, and give you the option to change them"
• Preferences: "Tell us how you prefer this to work"
• Properties: "Change one or more properties of this item"
• Edit: "This thing is already in a good state, but you can change it if you like"
• Configuration: "We have defaults, but they're so barebones you probably want to configure it yourself"

I think that one point of view is missing here namely the relation between configuration/settings/options/preferences.

To me a configuration or preferences contain many settings or options so there can be one setting or one option.

You usually say "Change this option/setting" and not "Change this preference/configuration", don't you?

When someone says preferences or configuration I understand it as a set of settings or options.

One thing that I don't see in the answers here (although bobince alludes to it) is that you should consider what is typical for your environment/operating system. For instance on windows I think "Options" is the most common choice even though many programs use different words. Likewise "Preferences" for mac os. Android OS uses "Settings"

So bottom line, use what is most common for your environment.