Apple will unveil iOS 17 during the main WWDC 2023 keynote in a couple of months. Reports say the next major iPhone operating system update shouldn’t offer any splashy features. But Apple will bring to iPhone a few “nice-to-have” features. Major changes to Control Center will apparently be among the iOS 17 novelties Apple will introduce this year.
If that’s accurate, then I’d love to be able to truly customize the Control Center the way I see fit.
Control Center is the quick settings panel with access to frequently used settings and home devices. To invoke Control Center, you slide down from the top right corner of iPhones featuring notch designs, Dynamic Island included. iPhones with home buttons have the Control Center at the bottom, but most won’t support iOS 17.
Apple introduced Control Center in iOS 7, so the feature is quite old. The last time Apple gave Control Center a big overhaul was in 2017 when iOS 11 was released. That’s also when the iPhone X launched, bringing a brand new screen design that mandated a big change to Control Center. Apple had to move it from the bottom, as swiping up from the bottom was a gesture that replaced the home button’s functionality.
According to a MacRumors forum tipster, Apple plans big changes to iOS 17’s Control Center. The person offered accurate information about the iPhone 14 Pro’s Dynamic Island before last year’s handset launch. But this is still just an unconfirmed rumor at this stage.
What the “major” changes to Control Center will be is unclear. The person told the blog that iOS 17 focuses on performance and stability improvements. Apparently, the new Control Center will be a more prominent change.
The one thing that seems certain about Control Center is that it won’t move from the top right corner. There’s no reason for Apple to change its position or for us to learn a new gesture.
What’s also clear is that Control Center is becoming crowded. You can add all sorts of useful features. But you can’t override the defaults that Apple set up for it. Maybe that’s where the major changes should start, allowing users to determine which quick settings they use most and arrange the Control Center toggles accordingly.
I’d certainly appreciate the ability to discard Apple’s default quick settings arrangement, many of which I don’t use frequently. I’d eliminate the connectivity panel and the music controls and move others upwards.
Also, the smart home toggles might benefit from having a separate page in Control Center that focuses solely on these gadgets. That way, I could quickly access controls for iPhone on one page and home controls on a different one.
That’s just speculation, however, as the leaker didn’t provide specific details about the upcoming Control Center.
While you wait for iOS 17, you can tweak Control Center to ensure thieves can’t access it if they steal your iPhone.
