---
name: Quick settings tile
slug: quick-settings-tile
category: component
status: published
created: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
modified: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
definition: A one tap button or toggle an app contributes to the system control
  surface, so one feature can be reached without opening the app.
aliases:
  - name: toggle tile
    source: community
  - name: Control Center control
    source: hig
tags:
  - platform-registers
relations:
  contrastWith:
    - widget
    - switch
    - app-shortcut
  variantOf: []
  partOf: []
  seeAlso: []
implementations:
  - system: hig
    name: Controls
    url: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/controls
sources:
  - title: "Apple HIG: Controls"
    url: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/controls
  - title: "Android: Create custom Quick Settings tiles"
    url: https://developer.android.com/develop/ui/views/quicksettings-tiles
demo: inline
exhibit: false
useWhen: one app feature deserves a place in system controls
---

A quick settings tile is a piece of an app that lives outside the app. The operating system
owns a panel of controls, pulled down from the top of the screen or swiped in from a corner,
and an app may contribute one entry to it: a glyph, a short title, sometimes a value, and a
single tap that does the thing. The whole point is that the app is not running and does not
have to start. Someone lowering the panel to switch a feature is not visiting the app, they
are operating one of its switches from the shell.

The anatomy is unusually strict, and it is most of what there is to learn. The symbol has to
read at a very small size against a background the app does not control. The title is a
handful of characters and gets truncated without mercy, so it names the feature and never the
app. The value is optional and is where most of the craft goes: a tile that says only "on" is
worse than one that says "on, until 6pm", and a tile whose value is stale is worse than one
that shows none. Because the system draws the tile, the app supplies content and state rather
than layout, which is why these are a component and not a widget.

The names collide badly and it is worth being explicit about it. Android calls them quick
settings tiles, and the API is literally a tile service. Apple calls them Controls, which runs
straight into the generic sense of the word: every button, slider, and switch in every
interface is a control, so "add a control" is ambiguous in a way "add a tile" is not. Apple
also groups them with the same building blocks used for widgets and Action button actions,
which makes the picture broader but the word no clearer. When precision matters, say quick
settings tile or Control Center control, and reserve the bare word control for the general
sense.

Against a [switch](/switch) the difference is ownership and reach. A switch is a control
inside your app, styled by you, understood in the context of the screen around it. A tile is
the same state exposed through someone else's surface, with no screen around it to give it
context, which is why the title has to carry all the meaning on its own. Against an
[icon button](/icon-button) the difference is that a tile is stateful by default: most of them
report a condition as well as accepting a tap, and a tile that only fires an action has to
work harder to look like it did anything, since the panel usually closes underneath it.