UX Improvement: Move "Delete Menu" link to the top header to prevent accidental data loss

[Smailove]

Description of the UX Issue

In the classic Menus admin screen (nav-menus.php), the (Delete Menu) link is placed at the very bottom of the screen, right next to the "Save Menu" button.

When a user expands a specific menu item to edit or delete it (as shown in the attached screenshot), their eyes naturally track downward looking for an action. Due to the proximity and visual hierarchy, many users mistakenly click "Delete Menu" thinking it will delete only the currently selected/expanded menu item, leading to accidental deletion of the entire menu structure.

Proposed Solution

To prevent this critical UX friction and unintended data loss, I propose moving the "Delete Menu" action to the top header area of the menu structure box (the gray header containing "Menu name", translations, and language selectors).

Separating the global destructive action ("Delete Menu") from the item editing workflow and placing it at the top will make its context clearer and significantly reduce accidental clicks.

Steps to reproduce the frustration

1. Go to Appearance > Menus.
2. Expand any menu item to edit its details.
3. Look down to save or modify, and observe how easily the red "Delete Menu" link can be confused with an item-level action.

[Smailove]

seggestion for the new place of the delete menu button

[deepakprajapati]

Thanks for reporting this.

One thing worth pointing out: deleting a menu isn't unguarded right now. When you click "Delete Menu," a confirmation popup appears first (from eventOnClickMenuDelete() in wp-admin/js/nav-menu.js):

You are about to permanently delete this menu.
'Cancel' to stop, 'OK' to delete.

So even if someone clicks it by mistake, they still have to press "OK" before anything is deleted. That makes this more of a UX improvement than a data-loss bug — though the placement concern is still worth addressing.

A quick note on the proposed fix: moving "Delete Menu" to the top would fix the problem on desktop, but a Save button still shows in the header on small screens (under 783px), so the new spot would need to handle that too. Some input from the Design/Accessibility team would help decide the best approach.