A toggle is a switch that allows you to turn something on or off. Toggles are often used to control settings and other types of information in a website or application. They can be helpful because they can make information easy to see and understand. However, it is important to use toggles carefully because they can cause confusion if they are not implemented consistently. Toggles should always have a clear label and be able to be turned off by a user.

Toggles are useful because they help to reduce the amount of clutter that can be found on a page. They can also be used to help organize content so that it is easier to find. Collapsible toggles and accordions can be a good way to create this type of organization. However, if your website or application has a lot of content that users need to see then it may be better to skip the toggles and instead implement navigation elements like a Table of Contents or sidebar menu.

The word toggle comes from the Latin word toglis, meaning “to change”. This can be used to refer to the ability of an item or feature to be switched on and off. A common example is a light switch that can be set to either on or off.

A toggle can also refer to a piece of hardware that is fitted or inserted into a loop in a chain, wire, or rope to prevent it from slipping or tightening. It is also used to describe the process of switching between two different settings or modes of operation in a computer.

Generally speaking, Release Toggles are not meant to stay around for very long. They are meant to be transitionary by nature, although some product-centric toggles might need to remain on for a longer time period. It is best practice to roll out a new version of a release with the toggle configuration flipped On unless you have an existing or legacy reason to do otherwise.

In some cases, teams will want to test how a release performs with both toggles Off and On. This is not recommended because it can cause a great deal of uncertainty and confusion in the testing environment. It is much better to use a more dynamic configuration system that can re-configure specific service instances at runtime.

Using static files to manage toggle configuration quickly becomes cumbersome at any significant scale. To counter this issue many organizations opt to move their toggle configuration into some sort of centralized store, often an existing application DB. This is usually accompanied by the build-out of an admin UI that allows system operators, testers and product managers to view and modify feature flags and their configuration.