Vault KV UI — Critical UX Issue: "Manage" Button Accessible Inside Folders Allows Accidental Engine Disable

[YusifHasanov]

Hi HashiCorp Team,

I wanted to bring a critical UX issue to your attention regarding the Vault KV secrets engine interface.

Problem:
When a user navigates inside any folder within the KV engine, the "Manage" button remains visible and accessible at the top of the page. However, this button controls the entire KV engine — not the folder the user is currently in — and includes a destructive option to disable the whole engine.

Impact:
Users who believe they are managing a specific folder can accidentally disable the entire KV engine, causing serious technical failures and service disruption.

Suggested Fix:

• Hide the "Manage" button when the user is inside a folder (i.e., show it only at the engine root level)
• Or add a confirmation dialog for destructive engine-level operations to prevent accidental actions

This is a straightforward change that would significantly reduce the risk of accidental data loss and service downtime.

We would appreciate it if this could be reviewed and prioritized.

Best regards

[heatherezell]

While there is a confirmation modal when disabling a secrets engine, however, that might be easy to blow right past. I will take this to our product and engineering teams; perhaps we could add something like a required confirmation of typing in "DISABLE" instead of just hitting a button. Thanks for this report, and I'm sorry it's causing pain. I'll escalate it with the team in our weekly meeting.

[YusifHasanov]

Hi @heatherezell,

Thank you for the quick response and for escalating this to the team — it's greatly appreciated!

I agree that a required text confirmation (such as typing "DISABLE") would be a much safer UX pattern for such a destructive action. This is similar to how GitHub handles repository deletion, where the user must type the repository name to confirm — and I think that's exactly the right approach here.

To summarize what I'd suggest:

• Require the user to type the engine name (or "DISABLE") before the disable action can proceed
• This is consistent with how other critical destructive actions are handled across the industry

Looking forward to seeing this addressed. Thanks again for taking the time to look into it!