Master iOS 10’s Control Centre

Learn about the iPhone and iPad shortcuts that are only ever a swipe (or three) away with Alan Stonebridge.

Control Centre saves you the bother of digging around for often-used device settings, opening an app that’s playing audio to control its playback, or searching for a flashlight app to light your path. Whether you’re at the Home screen, in an app, or you’ve just woken your device to its Lock screen, you can do all these things and more.

To open Control Centre, swipe upwards from the screen’s bottom edge. This slides a card over the bottom part of the screen and dims the rest of the display. Swiping up while using an app might not reveal Control Centre right away, though; look for a small tab with an arrow on it at the centre of the screen’s bottom edge; the point of this is to stop you accidentally pulling Control Centre over an app just by interacting with its controls near that point. Tap elsewhere on the screen to dismiss the tab and carry on, or swipe upwards from it to pull Control Centre into view.

From left to right, the top row of Control Centre contains buttons that toggle Airplane Mode (which disables Wi-Fi and Bluetooth), enable or disable Wi-Fi or Bluetooth on their own, toggle Do Not Disturb to avoid calls and notifications interrupting you, and lock the screen orientation (to portrait only on iPhone or iPod touch, but also to landscape on iPad).

Below these is a slider that controls screen brightness, illuminating the rest of the display as normal so you can accurately see its effect.

Next down are buttons to mirror your iOS device’s screen to an Apple TV and control whether Macs and other iOS devices can see your device and send things to you over a direct Wi-Fi connection between devices.

The Night Shift button toggles that feature and shows when it’ll next turn on or off. Night Shift warms the screen’s output, reducing the blue light that can disrupt your sleep. Set up Night Shift in ‘ Settings > Display & Brightness’.

3D TOUCH ENHANCEMENTS

The bottom row contains buttons that turn an iPhone’s flash into a flashlight or open the Clock, Calculator or Camera app. On a device with 3D Touch, press firmly on them for extra options, such as flashlight intensities, preset timer durations and camera modes.

Note the page dots that are shown below the card, which are new in iOS 10 — read on to learn how Control Centre’s layout has changed and about its new options.

“Night Shift warms the screen’s output, reducing the blue light that can disrupt your sleep.”