How to Customize Your iPhone's Control Center in iOS 18

ios18 widgets on an iPhone screen with the number 18 in the background

Apple released iOS 18.1 in October, more than a month after the tech company released iOS 18. While iOS 18.1 brings a few new features and bug fixes to your iPhone, iOS 18 gave you more avenues to customize your iPhone. The operating system lets you customize your lock screen and home screen, as well as your Control Center.

Control Center was introduced in 2013 with iOS 7. At the time, the Control Center gave you control of some iPhone functions, like screen brightness, and a few apps, like your calculator. Since then, you’ve been able to add certain functions and apps to the page, like Low Power Mode and Notes. With iOS 18, you can add whatever apps and functions you want to your Control Center.

Read more: Everything You Need to Know About iOS 18

Here’s how you can make your iPhone’s Control Center live up to its name.

How to add controls to your Control Center in iOS 18

1. Unlock your iPhone and swipe down from the top right corner of your screen.
2. Tap the plus (+) sign in the top left corner of your screen.
3. Tap Add a Control near the bottom of your screen.

Some of the accessibility controls you can add to Control Center in iOS 18 — There are a lot of accessibility controls that you can add to your Control Center.

Apple/Screenshot by CNET

You can either search for controls in the search bar across the top of the new menu, or you can scroll through the different controls. Some of the controls include old favorites, like Screen Recording, as well as new controls for things like Tap to Cash or Ping My Watch.

There’s also a shortcut called Open App, which turns any other app on your iPhone into a control. You can only open the app with this control, but you can use it to clean up your home screen or keep all your favorite apps in one place for quick access.

You can add as many controls as you want to your Control Center even after you’ve filled the page. Once you’ve filled the first Control Center page, the next control you add will appear on a new page, similar to how adding new apps to your home screen will keep adding new home screens. To access other Control Center pages, swipe up or down on your Control Center, or tap the correct page symbol on the far right side of your Control Center screen.

And When Apple released iOS 18.1, it added new separate connectivity controls to enable and disable things like your VPN and Bluetooth. Before that update, these controls would be present in the Connectivity tile, or on the Connectivity page in Control Center, but you couldn’t add them as their own control.

How to customize apps and functions in your Control Center

You can also make the controls larger to make them easier to access. Some controls can transform into tiles while others — like Music — can become their own Control Center page. Here’s how to resize your apps and functions.

1. Unlock your iPhone and swipe down from the top right corner of your screen.
2. Tap the plus (+) sign in the top left corner of your screen.

In this new view, the border around each control will now be thicker in its bottom right corner. Tap and drag this thicker section to expand the control.

Control Center controls that can be resized — You can resize many controls in the Control Center.

Apple/Screenshot by CNET

You can rearrange controls in this new view. After you’ve tapped the plus (+) sign in the top left corner of your Control Center, press and drag your controls to their new home like you would on your home screen.

How to remove controls from your Control Center

Here’s how you can easily remove controls from your Control Center if you’re no longer getting much use out of them and want to make room for new ones.

1. Unlock your iPhone and swipe down from the top right corner of your screen.
2. Tap the plus (+) sign in the top left corner of your screen.
3. Tap the minus (–) sign in the top left corner of the control you want to remove.

Can you reset your Control Center?

Unfortunately, there’s no way to reset your Control Center back to its default layout and controls at this time. However, the beta version of iOS 18.1 introduces a way for developers and beta testers to do this. So Apple might let you reset your iPhone’s Control Center soon.

For more on iOS 18, here’s everything you need to know about iOS 18.1, my iOS 18 review and our iOS 18 cheat sheet. You can also check out what iOS 18.2 could bring to your iPhone soon.