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Thursday, February 5, 2026

Customise iPhone Management Middle with the buttons you want most


If you wish to make your iPhone simpler to make use of, you may customise its Management Middle to realize sooner entry to the buttons and toggles you depend on to carry out frequent duties.

Plus, you may take away all of the junk you by no means contact from the iPhone Contol Middle, placing the important controls you really use entrance and heart.

Preserve studying to learn how and why it is best to customise the iPhone Management Middle to make the machine your personal.

Learn how to customise the iPhone Management Middle

As Apple says, the iPhone’s Management Middle “offers you immediate entry to the stuff you do essentially the most.” It places numerous toggles and buttons at your fingertip, so you may shortly activate a Focus mode, regulate your display brightness, swap on Airplane Mode and extra. (See the entire listing of accessible controls on Apple’s help web page.)

When you customise the Management Middle to your liking, all of your favourite iPhone controls might be only a fast downward swipe away.

Issues acquired even higher when Apple launched iOS 18 in 2024. Now you may change virtually every part within the iPhone’s Management Middle.

You possibly can regulate the scale and place of your iPhone’s media playback buttons, connectivity controls and extra. Additionally, you may add many extra controls than earlier than — and resize them to make them extra accessible in order for you. You possibly can even manage your buttons throughout a number of pages.

In iOS 17 and earlier variations, you may customise your iPhone’s Management Middle, too. Nonetheless, you can see fewer choices. And it’s essential to dig into the Settings app to find them.

Desk of contents: Learn how to customise the iPhone Management Middle

  1. Learn how to open Management Middle
  2. Add or take away controls out of your iPhone’s Management Middle
  3. Resize controls and manage into separate pages
  4. Customise iPhone Management Middle in older variations of iOS (17 and earlier)
  5. Extra methods to customise your iPhone

Learn how to open Management Middle

So as to make adjustments to the Management Middle, first it’s essential to open it. On an iPhone with a full-screen show with no Residence Button (iPhone X, XS, 11 or later), you swipe down from the top-right nook of the show. On an older iPhone with a Residence Button, you swipe up from the underside of the display.

With the multipage Management Middle format launched in iOS 18, you may proceed swiping up or down together with your thumb to scroll by way of the completely different pages in a single fluid movement.

Add or take away controls out of your iPhone’s Management Middle

Choose from a big array of choices.
Screenshot: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac

Able to tweak your iPhone’s Management Middle to your liking? First, open the Management Middle, then faucet the + button on the prime left of the display (or faucet and maintain an empty a part of the display). Both one will start the enhancing course of.

Subsequent, faucet Add a Management on the backside of the display so as to add a brand new button. You’ll see a panel slide up from the underside with a giant palette stuffed with buttons and toggles. Scroll by way of the listing to see all of the controls provided by each app. Alternatively, can seek for what you’re searching for up prime. Choose any management, and it’ll be added to the primary obtainable area in your iPhone’s Management Middle. Faucet the – button within the prime left to take away any icon or widget you don’t suppose you’ll use.

Then you may faucet and drag on a management to maneuver it round in your iPhone’s Management Middle. Just like the Residence Display, you may place the controls wherever you need. However as quickly as you’ve got a bunch of controls subsequent to one another in a row, eradicating one from the center will trigger the remainder to shuffle round.

Shifting bigger widgets could cause every part else to leap round slightly unexpectedly, so I like to recommend you begin by placing any 2×2, 4×2 or 4×4 widgets in place earlier than you contact anything.

Resize controls and manage into separate pages

Screenshots showing how to add the Now Playing and Connectivity widgets in the iPhone's control center, and illustrating how the Now Playing widget comes in multiple sizes
The Now Enjoying widget, on the left, is available in a bunch of various sizes. Some, like Connectivity, on the precise, can fill an entire web page.
Screenshot: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac

Subsequent, you in all probability will need to manage the format of your iPhone’s Management Middle. To resize a widget, simply drag its bottom-right nook. Some widgets, like Now Enjoying or Residence, acquire further options or add extra controls while you make them greater. Some, like Now Enjoying or Connectivity, could be expanded to fill all the display. Others, like Focus, can’t be resized.

When enhancing the Management Middle, you may swipe all the way down to create a brand new web page. You possibly can’t reorder the pages, so you must create them within the order you need them in. To delete a web page, you must take away all of its controls.

Personally, I take advantage of just one web page. I prefer to swipe down within the Management Middle with my proper thumb, faucet to toggle the button I need with my left thumb, and swipe again up in a single fluid, two-handed gesture. In case you arrange a number of pages, this gained’t work — tapping together with your second finger doesn’t work together with the controls in your display, it selects the present web page and interrupts the swipe gesture.

In case you persist with a one-page Management Middle, you may be taught this two-handed trick. I organized my one-page Management Middle fairly equally to the default format, however with the Connectivity and Now Enjoying widgets decrease on the display to make them extra reachable.

Customise iPhone Management Middle in older variations of iOS (17 and earlier)

Screenshots showing how to add the “Ping My Watch” button in Control Center settings on older versions of iOS.
Add extra controls to Management Middle.
Screenshot: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac

In older variations of iOS, you may customise iPhone’s Management Middle — Apple simply doesn’t offer you as many choices. To take action, open Settings > Management Middle. You’re restricted to a single web page and a smaller set of built-in system controls. And you may’t transfer or resize the media playback or connectivity controls.

Nonetheless, you may add controls you need and delete any you don’t need. So as to add one of many obtainable controls in iOS 17, faucet the inexperienced + button to the left of the merchandise. Reorder the controls by dragging the grabber on the precise. To take away an merchandise out of your iPhone’s Management Middle, faucet the crimson – button subsequent to an merchandise within the part above.

Extra methods to customise your iPhone

  • You possibly can totally customise your iPhone’s Residence Display. You possibly can place icons wherever on the display. Plus, followers of darkish mode can now take pleasure in alternate darkish mode icons. When you’ve got a coloration theme you need to match, you may tint icons to any hue you need.
  • StandBy mode turns your cellphone into a sensible show when it’s sitting in your desk, your nightstand or the kitchen counter.
  • Customise your iPhone’s Lock Display with a bunch of widgets, aesthetics and types. You’ve got a great deal of fonts, colours, types and themes obtainable.
  • Change out the Lock Display buttons from the usual Flashlight and Digicam to no matter you need. There’s a large choice of buttons you may swap of their place.
  • Create Focus modes to customise notification settings for various occasions of day, like work, trip, driving, private time and extra.

We initially printed this text on customise Management Middle on iPhone in iOS 18 on July 24, 2024. We up to date it with the newest info on January 24, 2026.

D. Griffin Jones is a author, podcaster and video producer for Cult of Mac. Griffin has been a passionate laptop fanatic since 2002, when he acquired his first PC — however since getting a Mac in 2008, he hasn’t turned again. His abilities in graphic and net design, together with video and podcast enhancing, are self-taught over 20+ years. Griffin has a bachelor’s diploma in laptop science and has written a number of (unpublished) apps for Mac and iOS. His assortment of previous computer systems is made up of 40+ desktops, laptops, PDAs and units, courting again to the early ’80s. He brings all of those artistic and technical abilities, together with a deep information of Apple historical past, into his work for Cult of Mac.



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