Control Center changes again in iOS 18.1 – here’s what’s different

Apple has released iOS 18.1 beta 5, adding new tools to Control Center. Here’s what you need to know.

Custom Control Center in iOS 18.1

Since iOS 18, you can organize the Control Center yourself and place your most used controls front and center. You have different windows, where you can find functions that belong together. For example, there is a tab with connectivity, with media players and a window with your favorites. Making buttons in the Control Center larger or smaller is also possible.

iOS 18.1 beta 5 brings a number of improvements again. For example, iOS 18.1 adds new connectivity tools to the Control Center and there is an option to reset the Control Center to the default layout. The latter is useful because customizing the Control Center takes some getting used to. Before you know it, you have deleted a control or a page.

Missing buttons added

One of the criticisms of the new iOS 18 Control Center is that the Connectivity options are too limited. If you want a new slider in the new Control Center addyou’ll find a section called Connectivity. This contains the standard panel with Airplane mode, AirDrop, and Wi-Fi, and a fourth button that expands the panel to show more options.

Outside of this four-button panel, there are currently limited options for adding connectivity controls. Currently, you have the choice of:

• Airplane mode
• Mobile data
• Personal hotspot
• Bluetooth

So if you don’t find the four-button control convenient, you can customize much of the functionality yourself with these standalone options. But in iOS 18.1 beta 5, Apple added two more connectivity tools to Control Center for you to choose from:

• Wi-Fi
• VPN

With these two additions, nearly every connectivity option is now available in a standalone form, giving you more flexibility in creating your own custom Control Center pages in iOS 18.1.

The remaining missing connectivity options are AirDrop and satellite controls. These may be added in a future beta. It would also be nice if you could customize the four-button panel to your liking.

Reset control panel

According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, iOS 18.1 will also include a button that will let you reset the Control Center to its factory settings.

It’s great that Control Center in iOS 18 is so customizable. But sometimes you customize way too much and find yourself longing for the defaults, if only to have a fresh starting point. That’s why it’s nice to see Apple adding a “reset” button to Control Center in iOS 18.1.