How to Customize Control Center in iPhone?

Apple released Control Center as part of iOS 7. Though iPhone has a “Settings” app, Control Center helps to access and manage important settings. This is useful if you know how to manage the shortcuts in Control Center that you frequently use. Your iPhone comes with some default shortcuts in the Control Center which you can remove and customize as per your need. In this article, we will explain how you can do that.

Note: Apple also introduced similar feature for macOS with the version Big Sur. However, iPhone and macOS Control Centers are two different things like App Stores which you have to manage on the corresponding devices.

Open Control Center in iPhone

On the latest iPhone models, you can open Control Center by swiping down from the top right corner of your phone’s screen. Good part is that it will work even when you have an open app. To close, simply tap on any empty area on the screen which will take you back to the previous app that you are viewing. So, accessing Control Center is independent action of the app you are currently viewing. Alternatively, you can go to “Settings” app and open Control Center” option.

Customizing Control Center in iPhone

Though there are not much customization option options available, you can still use the settings and follow simple tricks to make the most of Control Center.

Enable or Disable Access Within Apps

As mentioned, iPhone will allow you to open Control Center from any apps by default. However, some users may not like this and want to open it only from the home screen.

• Go to “Settings” app and tap on “Control Center” option.
• Turn off the option that says “Access Within Apps”.

Now that if you swipe from the top right corner within any apps, you will see the notifications open instead of Control Center. The only option is that you must go to the home screen to open Control Center.

Expanding Groups

Some icons in the Control Center will work when you simply tap on it. However, you can tap and hold on the icon or group to expand the controls. For example, Control Center will show the networking group of icons like airplane mode, Wi-Fi, cellular and bluetooth as a first control (if you have not customized the settings). You may know that you can tap on Wi-Fi icon to enable or disable it without going through settings. However, do you know that you can tap and hold on the group to expand the controls? For networking icons, it will show additional control for AirDrop and Personal Hotspot.

Press and Hold to View More Options

Similar to group of icons, you can also tap and hold on some icons to open additional options. For example, nothing will happen when simply press on brightness or volume controls in the Control Center. What you need is to press on the icon and swipe up or down to increase or decrease the value. When you tap and hold on the brightness control, it will open additional options for enabling/disabling dark mode, night shift and true tone.

Since, the controls will change for each option, you can try and find more how it works on your phone. You may be surprised to find the some hidden controls like taking selfie from by tapping and holding the camera icon in the Control Center.

Note that some controls work when you tap but will show you additional options when you hold the icon. For example, tapping on flashlight will enable the torch light in iPhone. However, tap and hold the flashlight icon to open additional control screen where you can increase or decrease the density of the light. Many users do not know this trick and think iPhone battery controls the flashlight.

Add or Remove App Controls

If you find too many controls are cluttering your Control Center, then you can easily arrange them from “Settings > Control Center” section.

• Tap on – icon in front of any control under “Included Controls” section and then select “Remove” to delete it from the Control Center. Note that you can’t remove the default controls like networking group of icons, music, brightness, volume, etc.
• You can hold the three horizontal lines at the end of each control to move it up or down and rearrange the order.
• Tap on green + icon in front of the control under “More Controls” section to add it to the Control Center. The new icon will be added as a last item in the list.

Complete List of Control Center Controls

Here is a complete list of controls that you can find in the Control Center settings. Though we do not see any third-party apps adding additional controls, you can find the apps under existing controls. For example, “Screen Recording” option will show all apps that will allow you to record the screen including third-party apps installed on your iPhone.