Will iOS 18 Finally Bring a Long-Awaited Control Center Redesign?
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With less than two weeks to go before Apple takes the wraps off iOS 18 at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), it’s no surprise that we’re hearing more information leak out than ever. After all, WWDC also means the first developer beta of iOS 18 is right around the corner, and while that version will be far from final, it has to be both feature-complete and stable enough for a release beyond the walls of Apple Park.
In other words, any changes that Apple plans to show off in iOS 18 are already locked down by now, and one of those could be the revamped Control Center that we’ve been hearing about for a few years now.
According to a recent tweet by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, folks who are already using iOS 18 and macOS 15 (likely Apple employees, at this point) have been talking about a revamp to the Settings app that will make it easier to navigate. However, these changes also apparently include an update to the Control Center — that’s the panel that comes up when you swipe down from the top-right corner of your screen.
It’s not the first time we’ve heard this. Last year, an ostensibly reliable source said it was coming in iOS 17, but it never materialized. Two years before that, some believed it was coming in iOS 15.
So, will it happen in iOS 18? We’ll have to wait and see, but there’s certainly a bit more evidence to support it.
If anything, the rumored changes last year may have simply failed to make the cut for iOS 17 and been pushed off to allow Apple’s software engineers to focus on other priorities. This year, MacRumors has confirmed with its sources that Apple has “internally tested a redesigned Control Center for iOS 18,” but whether it’s ready to go remains an open question.
What Could Change in Control Center?
It seems reasonable that Apple has at least been considering reworking the Control Center for a while as it moves toward a more customizable user interface.
For years, the iPhone Home Screen was mostly a routine collection of icons until Apple brought Widgets in iOS 14, along with a new App Library to let you tuck away less-used or more personal apps. Then, iOS 16 did a similar thing to the Lock Screen, and iOS 17 brought interactive widgets.
iPhone users may get even more Home Screen freedom in iOS 18, with reports indicating that we’ll be able to drop icons nearly anywhere they like. More recent rumors have suggested Apple could even provide a way to colonize those Home Screen icons.
A Control Center update would fit right in with the rest of these changes. The Control Center we know today was introduced alongside iOS 7’s big UI redesign and went full-screen in iOS 11 to match the release of the iPhone X. However, not much has changed since then.
As it stands today, the Control Center offers few options for customization. The upper half is fixed with panels and controls for wireless features, Now Playing, rotation lock, screen mirroring, volume, brightness, and Focus modes. HomeKit users can enable a section that adds two rows of Home accessory controls, but they can’t choose what appears there; Siri does that for you based on your usage patterns, the time of day, and whatever happens to be turned on.
With the Home section enabled, you’re stuck with six rows of controls that can’t be changed before you actually get into the ones that can. However, even here, iOS 17 only offers you a maximum of 26 buttons to choose from, all of which are exclusively for built-in apps and features. Third-party developers need not apply.
There’s no word on what Apple will change in Control Center — it might just move a few things around and give it a fresh coat of paint — but it would be nice to see a greater degree of customization, as well as the ability to move or turn off some of the upper controls that aren’t as commonly used.
Even better would be support for letting third-party developers create buttons that could be added to the Control Center to launch into specific apps and perform functions there. Even the ability to add Siri Shortcuts to Control Center would be a significant change since it would allow some of the same capabilities for interacting with third-party apps without the need for Apple to let developers tie into Control Center directly.
[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]
