The Control Center you see on iOS 13 came into existence when Apple ditched its page-like Control Center design for a neatly organized array of control icons with iOS 11. And then, after a few improvements and updates with iOS 12, finally offered more granular control with Control Center controls on the newly-released iOS 13. Some of these options include the ability to Force Touch on different controls like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to connect to devices directly, brightness control to activate Night Shift or Dark Mode, and more.
Before you proceed further, make sure you have the latest version of iOS running on your phone. To do this, go into Settings > General > Software Update. If your device is running iOS 13, you are good to proceed further, however, if it is on an earlier version of iOS, go ahead and update it to iOS 13.
Customize Control Center controls
Although the software already offers a few controls in the Control Centre, it limits them to only a few controls. So before you jump in and start using them, you should customize your Control Center with the controls based on your requirements. For this, first, go into the Settings > Control Center. Here, toggle the button next to Access Within Apps to access Control Center anywhere on your phone. Next, tap on Customize Controls, and you will be presented with a list of controls on the next screen. From here, tap on the plus (+) button to add controls in the INCLUDE section and eventually to the Control Center. Or, hit the minus (–) button to remove controls from the Control Center. Additionally, you can also change the order of controls in which they appear by tapping on the hamburger-like button next to each of them and rearranging accordingly.
When you customize your Control Center, keep in mind that there are certain controls like the connections and music platter, volume and brightness, auto-rotate screen, do not disturb, and screen mirroring controls, which cannot be modified or removed. As a result, the controls that you add to your Control Center start appearing below these pre-set controls. So before you get excited and add all the available controls to your Control Center, we advise you to add only the ones that are useful to you to avoid the Control Center from becoming cluttered.
Essential Control Center controls
1. Flashlight
A flashlight can come in handy in a lot of scenarios, which is why having a control shortcut offers easy access without any hassle. If that isn’t enough to excite you, the control also allows for the option to adjust the intensity of the light using Force Touch. Simply hard press on the flashlight control and slide your finger to change its intensity.
2. Voice Memos
Voice Memos is the default voice recording app that comes pre-installed on Apple devices. If you take a lot of voice notes every now and then or you want to record something, this control shortcut can surely come in handy. To use this, tap the Voice Memos control to open the app and start a voice memo.
3. Magnifier
It might surprise a few to know that their iPhone includes a magnifier, which had been hidden deep inside the settings. Until iOS 13, when it became comparatively easier to access with the Accessibility settings out on the Settings main page. A simple tap on the magnify control opens the camera app with a slider to magnify (zoom) in and out on a subject. The magnifier also offers options like flash, focus lock, presets, and a capture button, which can come in handy if you want to capture a magnified image of a subject.
4. QR Code Reader
Apple added native QR code scanning capability to its camera with iOS 11 and later introduced a control shortcut for the same to make it easier to access directly from the Control Center. To access the reader, tap on the QR Code Reader control to open the camera app. From here, align the QR code inside the square box to perform a scan. The reader also has a flash button at the bottom, which can turn out to be useful when you want to scan a QR in dark lighting situations.
5. Screen Recording
Similar to Voice Memos, Apple also has a native screen recording app that allows you to record your screen for various scenarios. To start a recording, tap on the control in the Control Center, which starts a 3-second countdown timer, and then starts recording the screen. At this time, you can perform whatever it is that you want to capture, and once it’s done, you can tap on Recording in the notification bar to stop the recording and save it automatically in Photos.
6. Low Power Mode
As the name suggests, the Low Power Mode allows you to save some juice when you are running low on battery and cannot charge it immediately. It works by limiting certain trivial features on the phone from running/refreshing in the background, which would otherwise consume some resources, and in turn, end up using more battery. To enable Low Power Mode, simply tap on the control, and it is activated.
7. Guided Access
Another feature that a lot of users might not be familiar with is Guided Access. The feature limits your phone to a single app (the one that is running) and lets you decide the available features to allow you to hand your device to someone and prevent them from peeping into your phone or accessing certain apps or features. To activate it, tap on its control in the Control Centre within the app that you want to restrict, after which, you can restrict access to certain areas on the screen, sleep/wake button, volume buttons, touch, keyboard, etc. And then, follow the on-screen instructions to start or end Guided Access.
Other Notable Control Center controls
Apart from the controls listed above, there are a few more controls available in the Control Center to allow you to perform quick actions. Some of these include — Alarm, Camera, Timer, Stopwatch, Notes, Dark Mode, and more. If you find yourself using any of these apps or features often, you can add them to your Control Center by following the steps mentioned above. That’s it for this article! Those were our recommendations for some of the Control Center controls that we believe are essential and turn out to be helpful in daily use case scenarios. Which controls do you find the most useful? Let us know in the comments below.
