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Control Center on iOS 18 Rumored to Feature Upgraded Music Widget and HomeKit Improvements

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In a social media post last week, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said iOS 18 will include "updates" to Control Center, and he has now outlined a few specific changes.

iOS-18-Control-Center-Feature-Iridescent-1.jpg

In the latest edition of his Power On newsletter on Sunday, Gurman said Control Center will feature an upgraded music widget and improved controls for HomeKit smart home accessories. However, he did not provide any further details about these changes, so all we know for now is these will apparently be two focus areas for Apple.

Apple will unveil iOS 18 during its WWDC keynote on June 10, and the first beta should be made available to members of the Apple Developer Program immediately following the presentation. The update should be widely released in September.

Article Link: Control Center on iOS 18 Rumored to Feature Upgraded Music Widget and HomeKit Improvements
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2024/06/03/ios-18-control-center-rumored-changes/
TwoBytes said:
A whole year for updated widgets?
I hope this isn't dramatised as big news; you're gonna love it, etc, as this is minimal effort for something so minor.
Click to expand...

Control Center is the bigger deal, but both of them sound like unmentioned spots on the summary grid.
 
HomeKit playback controls are long overdue for an update. As it currently stands, you have to root around to click the little button that enables you to control what’s playing on your HomePods. Not a great experience. Hopefully they just consolidate everything onto one screen.
 
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TwoBytes said:
A whole year for updated widgets?
I hope this isn't dramatised as big news; you're gonna love it, etc, as this is minimal effort for something so minor.
Click to expand...
It’ll just be a bullet point somewhere in the OS features when Apple releases it. You’re reading a website devoted to all the minutia of Apple products so it’s not exactly surprising when something like this gets a whole story devoted to it.
 
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🤔 Here's an idea, how about make access to the control center something usable, so it's actually a thing?

I'm saying I like it, it's just a super PITA to get there with pull down from top right?
There has to be a better way?

Give us at least accessibility triple click, add 'open control center' to accessibility shortcuts?

Look, I'm not asking, I'm letting you know, that is why control center is such a nothing burger, it's a PITA!
 
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The control center is a mess of a UI and has been for years so anything will be a big improvement. The Homekit part of the control center is extremely annoying when my most used icons may disappear and barley used ones show up, and somehow I have no ability to control what homekit icons are shown on that UI.

It's a very poorly designed and cluttered mess of UI.
 
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Apple to release the biggest update to iOS in the history of iPhone. A new control center with stunning new and improved widgets allowing for the highest performance widgets ever. Additionally, we have designed the music widget from the ground up and are including a stunning new class of music memoji, or as the courageous call them: MuMoji. Apple MuMoji are the latest leap forward in the storied history of iPhone, truly placing it far beyond the reach of any phone on the market today.
 
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TwoBytes said:
A whole year for updated widgets?
I hope this isn't dramatised as big news; you're gonna love it, etc, as this is minimal effort for something so minor.
Click to expand...
Did you miss all the other rumored features surrounding iOS 18? As it stands it’s shaping up to be a pretty big update so I don’t really get your critique here.
 
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The Home widget in Control Center constantly glitches and opens a blank page on the first try, it has done that for longer than I can remember. Maybe it'll finally be fixed.
 
I hope the music widget improvements come with Music app interface improvements. Home, Browse, Radio have in my opinion somewhat redundant and inconsistent items. Recommended for you, Top picks for you, Trending, New releases, Just updated. I mean it's just all over the place for me.
 
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rustygh said:
🤔 Here's an idea, how about make access to the control center something usable, so it's actually a thing?

I'm saying I like it, it's just a super PITA to get there with pull down from top right?
There has to be a better way?

Give us at least accessibility triple click, add 'open control center' to accessibility shortcuts?

Look, I'm not asking, I'm letting you know, that is why control center is such a nothing burger, it's a PITA!
Click to expand...
You could... swipe up from the bottom!

Oh wait.

(You still can on non-Face ID iPhones, where it makes sense the most at the bottom, honestly.)
 
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I have a library in Apple Music but don't subscribe, so can care less. And, I prefer actual switches in my house so don't care about HomeKit either ...
 
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rustygh said:
🤔 Here's an idea, how about make access to the control center something usable, so it's actually a thing?

I'm saying I like it, it's just a super PITA to get there with pull down from top right?
There has to be a better way?

Give us at least accessibility triple click, add 'open control center' to accessibility shortcuts?

Look, I'm not asking, I'm letting you know, that is why control center is such a nothing burger, it's a PITA!
Click to expand...
There's no accessibility shortcut but I have the Control Center on Back Tap, though I usually just use reachability.
 
I loved Ive’s influences at Apple.
All except iOS.
It’s of course a matter of taste but the design glass and over colored is not my cup of tea.

I do hope someone will eventually come up with something fresh.
Though I love the iPhone, I never enjoyed iOS ever since Ive.

But these are tastes and differ from one person to another - would love to have more options - all I am saying.
 
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ignatius345 said:
HomeKit playback controls are long overdue for an update. As it currently stands, you have to root around to click the little button that enables you to control what’s playing on your HomePods. Not a great experience. Hopefully they just consolidate everything onto one screen.
Click to expand...
Agreed. I wish they'd come up with a better way to manage the Apple TV and HomePod controls compared to local/on-device controls.

All of us see inconsistent behavior where sometimes somebody else watching TV on an Apple TV will trigger the remote to show up on our phones. Other times, the mini playback controls show up automatically on the Lock Screen but the TV remote doesn't come up on its own. Sometimes I want the TV remote to stay up (iPhone 15 Pro AOD) and it refuses to. It's just very frustratingly inconsistent, unreliable, and there's just no clear logic as to why it chooses to do each behavior some of the time.
 
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