iOS 18 Control Center reportedly features redesigned music widget and HomeKit controls

iOS 18 is expected to be a pretty big release in terms of the number of changes and new features. Although AI capabilities will be the main theme of the update, we also expect other improvements.

Today, Mark Gurman writes in his Power On newsletter that Apple is preparing to overhaul the iPhone’s Control Center as part of iOS 18. The new design will include updates to the music widget “in the works.” playback” and HomeKit smart home controls.

More specifically, Gurman says:

In other iOS 18 news, here’s some additional information: The Settings app is being redesigned with a cleaner interface, better organization, and much-improved search (this is also coming to macOS). Control Center, meanwhile, will be upgraded with a new music widget and improvements to the way it manages smart home appliances.

The current incarnation of Control Center hasn’t changed much since the iPhone X launched in 2017, so it’s a bit late to give it some love. Gurman doesn’t detail exactly what will be different, but we can speculate.

Currently, the audio controls are exposed in a small 2×2 square tray at the top right of the screen. As controlling audio while playing is a very common use case, a long-requested user feature has been to expand the now-playing UI, perhaps to include album art and the default progress bar. In iOS 17, you have to long press and wait to reveal these extra items.

Regarding HomeKit, currently the iOS system “intelligently” selects up to six accessories to display in the Home section of the Control Center. You can also click the double-wide Home tile to reveal a mini version of the Home app, with your favorite accessories organized by the room they’re in.

What is quite frustrating is that the automatic layout often does not correspond to what the user wants. The layout can also move and change seemingly randomly, making it difficult to learn muscle memory for common controls like your living room lights or thermostat.

It would be much nicer if you could just manually choose which accessories to explicitly include in the Control Center and have a fixed layout of what you want to see there always visible. Making these tiles larger – as they are in the Home app itself – would also improve ease of use. In this particular case, users would appreciate less “AI”, not more, for the iOS 18 update.

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