Progressive disclosure
Showing the few options most people need and tucking the rest behind an 'Advanced' toggle they open only when they need it.
See it
What it is
Progressive disclosure splits an interface into a simple first layer everyone sees and deeper layers people open on demand. The print dialog with its 'More settings' link is the canonical example: two controls for the 95% case, thirty for the rest. Jakob Nielsen made the name stick, and the split is decided by frequency of use, not by difficulty.
Reach for it when a feature has a long tail of options that a minority needs: export settings, notification preferences, filter panels, API config. Its cousin is staged disclosure, where a long form becomes a wizard and each step reveals the next. Both trade one big scary screen for a sequence of small ones, and both cost an extra click.
The gotcha: whatever you hide, some people will never find. Pay that tax deliberately. Never hide required fields or the one thing half your users came for, keep the disclosure control obviously expandable, and label it by what is inside ('Shipping options') instead of a vague 'More'. If you catch yourself burying features because the screen feels cluttered, the real fix is usually fewer features or better defaults, not a deeper drawer.
Ask AI for it
Restructure this settings panel with progressive disclosure. Keep the 3 to 5 most-used controls visible at the top level with sensible defaults already applied, and move the rest into a collapsed 'Advanced' section built as a disclosure with a chevron that rotates on open. Label each collapsed group by its contents, not 'More'. Wire aria-expanded and aria-controls on the trigger, animate the height over 200ms with ease-out, and keep the section open across page visits by storing its state. Never place required fields or destructive actions inside a collapsed section, and show a small summary of the hidden values in the collapsed header when they differ from the defaults.