How to customize Control Center on iPhone and iPad

By Lory Gil, Sergio Velasquez
published

iPhone 11 Pro on iOS 13 with Control Center
iPhone 11 Pro on iOS 13 with Control Center (Image credit: Christine Romero-Chan / iMore)
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Control Center provides a wide variety of controls from built-in apps. You can access your flashlight, timer, camera, connect your Bluetooth speakers, and many other features. Not all these tools are available from the get-go, but changing it is extremely easy to do. This is what you need to customize Control Center on iPhone and iPad.

What can you put in Control Center?

There are many things you can put in Control Center. From Accessibility features, to your Notes and connection settings. Here's a list of everything you can add.

  • Airplane mode
  • Cellular
  • Wi-Fi
  • Bluetooth
  • Music playback
  • Screen orientation
  • Do Not Disturb
  • Screen brightness
  • Volume controls
  • Screen mirroring
  • Accessibility shortcuts
  • Alarm
  • Apple TV Remote
  • Calculator
  • Camera
  • Dark mode
  • Do Not Disturb While Driving
  • Flashlight
  • Guided Access
  • Hearing
  • Home app
  • Low Power mode
  • Magnifier
  • Notes
  • QR Code Reader
  • Screen Recording
  • Sleep Mode
  • Sound Recognition
  • Stopwatch
  • Text Size
  • Timer
  • Voice Memos
  • Wallet

How to add controls to Control Center

When you have Control Center enabled, you can customize which features you want to create shortcuts for.

  1. Launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad.
  2. Scroll down and tap on Control Center.
  3. Scroll down and go to the More Controls section.
  4. Tap the add button (+) next to a control to add it to your Control Center.

How to add controls to Control Center: Launch Settings. Scroll down and tap on Control Center. Go to the More Controls section and tap on the plus button to add a control (Image credit: iMore)

Note: You won't be able to make any changes to Airplane mode, Cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, audio playback, Lock screen rotation, Do Not Disturb, or screen mirroring. Those controls always remain in Control Center.

How to customize Control Center on iPhone and iPad

You may discover that you want to use one particular control a lot and another rarely in Control Center. You can organize what order they appear in the panel.

  1. Launch the Settings app on your iPhone.
  2. Scroll Down and tap on Control Center.
  3. Tap a control on the three lines on the right side to move it up or down on the list.
  4. Drag the control to its new location on the list.

How to Customize Control Center: Open the Settings app, scroll down and tap on Control Center. Tap on the three lines on the right side of a control to move it up or down. Drag the control to its new (Image credit: iMore)

You can fiddle with your Control Center settings until it looks just right to you.

How to remove controls from Control Center

So maybe it turns out you don't use the flashlight as much as you thought you did. You can remove it from Control Center.

  1. Launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad.
  2. Scroll down and tap on Control Center.
  3. Select which control you want to remove from the Included Controls section.
  4. Tap the remove button (-) next to a control to remove it from the Control Center.

How to remove Controls in Control Center: Open Settings and scroll down to Control Center. Under the Included Controls section tap on the remove button to remove it from Control Center (Image credit: iMore)

Note: You won't be able to make any changes to Airplane mode, Cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, audio playback, lock screen rotation, Do Not Disturb, or screen mirroring. Those controls always remain in Control Center.

Any questions about customizing Control Center on iPhone and iPad?

Do you have any questions about how to customize Control Center for iPhone and iPad? Put them in the comments and we'll help you out.

Updated November 2020: Updated for iOS 14 and iPadOS 14.

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Lory Gil
Lory Gil

Lory is a renaissance woman, writing news, reviews, and how-to guides for iMore. She also fancies herself a bit of a rock star in her town and spends too much time reading comic books.  If she's not typing away at her keyboard, you can probably find her at Disneyland or watching Star Wars (or both).

13 Comments
  • "shortcut to the Notes app" Now I really want 3rd party apps in the control center. I don't like Notes. It isn't plain text, has no dark mode, and doesn't support Markdown. I guess there's always widgets.
  • That looks pretty nice. I like it. Good job apple
  • Interested to check it out when the beta comes out but right now it just looks like a hot mess.
  • I'm using the developer beta, and it's really not a hot mess. Maybe they will add labels of some sort to form categories, but I can't see the finalized design being much different (especially given that they've demonstrated this at WWDC)
  • It kind of looks like a screen filled with widgets which is cool but looks disoriented like there are gaps etc but I will wait my judgement untill I use it.
  • The gaps separate different sections, it doesn't look that bad when using it, but maybe Apple will tweak the design before releasing
  • I think its such a terrible design but the concept is fine.
  • The design looks ok to me, I'm using it on the developer beta and it's easy to access and use. It'll most likely get tweaked somewhat before release. What in particular do you not like about it?
  • I'm currently running it myself too. The icons looks just too cluttered and all over the place. They need to tweak it a little more to look refine/more sleeker.
  • I'm hoping iOS 11 will allow me to be able to toggle LTE on and off. Not cellular data entirely, just LTE. I have some old speakers that I plug into my 6S when I want to listen to music, and if LTE is on it creates interference that I can hear over the speakers. The only workaround is to tap-tap-tap-tap into the settings and turn off LTE, which is a pain.
    OTHO, while I try to avoid being one of those that assumes *their* use case applies to everyone else ("minimum iPhone storage must start at 128 GB or its DOA!!"), I'll deviate from it this one time and wonder aloud why Apple thought rotation lock so important it needed its own button in the Control Center.
  • If only you could also put those control center icons/widgets directly on a home screen...
  • I'd love to be able to add a few favorite apps to control center. That way from any app I could simply swipe up and go to my fav app rather than going to home screen or the ever changing siri app suggestions on the two panel drop down.. or swipe right panel.. or ughh apple's widget/notification tray is confusing. Control center could be the go-to place for all favorite toggles, settings, apps, anything. Happy to see this but let's open it up even more.
  • You mention above that calculator can be added to the Control Center. Where can it be found? Calculator and other additions cited are not in the Available List. How can others be added?