Apple is rumored to update the iPhone and iPad’s Control Center on iOS and iPadOS 18 with a new music widget and improved smart home control.
This is literally all we know about the expected changes to the Control Center. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who broke the news, didn’t provide further details.
“Control Center, meanwhile, will be upgraded with a new music widget and improvements to how it operates smart home appliances,” Mark wrote in the latest edition of his Power On newsletter for Bloomberg. He tweeted earlier that iOS 18 will bring unspecified “updates” to the Control Center feature.
I’ve never liked the Control Center’s Music widget
The Control Center debuted alongside iOS 7 in 203. IOS 11 revamped the feature four years later, and now iOS 18 is said to tweak it again. MacRumors says Apple has internally tested a redesigned Control Center for inclusion in iOS 18.
I’ve always felt the Now Playing control doesn’t do my music justice. I would like bigger album artwork and fullscreen controls like the Now Playing lockscreen control. Smart home controls could be improved, too. I only have a few smart lights, but how they’re managed through the Control Center has been driving me nuts.
Please add AI smarts to the smart home widget
What bothers me most is that I cannot mark specific scenes and accessories to use through the Control Center.
Instead, the widget only shows relevant scenes and smart home appliances for that moment. So if I want to turn on my bedside lamp during the day, I must fire up the Home app because the Control Center decides to only display that control at night.
One simple fix would be to employ AI, which AI is said to be used heavily throughout the system, to make those choices more relevant and smarter. Or maybe give us options to define specific smart home devices to expose in the Control Center.
We’ll soon learn about Apple’s plans for the Control Center, iOS 18’s AI and other improvements coming to its software platforms as the company has scheduled its Woldwide Developers Conference, or WWDC, on June 10.