Redesigning Apple’s Control Centre
A Brief Introduction
I’m a huge fan of Apple’s Control Centre as I can turn WiFi on and off in a flash and it’s so accessible and easy to reach, Just swipe up from the bottom of the screen to view the Control Centre and you have access to quickly change Settings, share your screen or share files, or get to the flashlight or Timer on your iPhone or iPad.
At it’s core, I use the Control Centre to save time. And for the most part it does a great job at doing that but there’s just two things that I wish it would do….
The Problem
Imagine this:
Your heading back from a night out and your drunk, you keep messing with your iPhone to try and find your location and get to the closest subway to go home. The battery life on your iPhone is slowly draining and you are in a hurry. You have to turn mobile data on as well. From the home screen, this is 8 taps to do this in total. Surely there must be an easier way.
And that’s the problem
Apple’s Control Centre is currently setup to only have a limited amount of settings that you can change and you can’t access the mobile data or location services in the Control Centre. Every iPhone user I know wants this functionality. Not one person I’ve talked to about this has ever used the default Do Not Disturb and Portrait Orientation Lock. Shortcut buttons to toggle Location Services and Mobile Data on & off would save battery life and it would be accessible in half the amount of taps then going into Settings. This would make coming back from your drunk night out far quicker & more efficient instead of stopping and messing around in Settings. We could simply toggle on Mobile Data and Location Services in a jiffy.
The Concept
The core idea behind incorporating Location Services and Mobile Data to the Control Centre is to save battery life and time.
Overview
The shortcut buttons work by toggling them on & off in the Control Centre by replacing the default Do Not Disturb and Portrait Orientation Lock buttons.
Incorporating Location Services and Mobile Data
I decided to leave this process exactly the same and keep the settings section on the top of the Control Centre but just change two of the buttons, keeping the colours consistent. When you click each button it corresponds to the colour in the settings and this is exactly what I’m doing. Currently Wi-Fi and Bluetooth is set on. I’ve noticed that when you have Wi-Fi on, Mobile Data get’s overridden so Wi-Fi and Mobile Data can be on at the same time. Only when you turn Wi-Fi off Apple lets you use mobile data.
Most of the screen looks the same but you’ll noticed the last two buttons have change from default Do Not Disturb to Mobile Data and Portrait Orientation Lock to Location Services. I wanted to keep the redesign simple but efficient for the user to understand. I’ve highlighted the Mobile Data to show you that it’s on but it’s not until you turn Wi-Fi off does it work.
