Why Cancel Buttons Should Never Have a Color

The "Not Now" example looks disabled to my eye just as much as the disabled example.

I think the rule here makes sense as far as design works now, except that "Not Now" example.

I agree a cancel button should not be as prominent as the default button, but a greyed out button is terrible UX as it looks disabled.

Cancelling IS and action too.

A couple of years ago I accidentally cancelled my Adobe CC subscription because instead of being a fallback to safety as it normally is, the "Cancel" button immediately ended the non-refundable subscription[0]. I don't remember what the actual fallback to safety button was—probably "Now Now".

Adobe fixed that glaring problem soon after. I expect I wasn't the only one to make that mistake.

[0] You have to pay for whole year in advance and I was only one month in, which meant that was a $300 mistake. Fortunately, Adobe gave me a refund going through the rigaramorole of calling support, and they told me to create a new subscription. Which was great, because for some reason it gave me the one year student discount again, which I had already used the previous year.

We use Teams for video conferencing at work. When someone calls, there are three buttons. One of them, the hang up button, is red; the other two are blue. I hit the red one half the time. Maybe I'm not very smart, but it sure seems like it wants me to hit it!

What about instances where cancelling loses all the data that you've been typing in a form? Should it not have a red colour as a form of warning?