A toggle is a switch that can be flipped on and off. It is commonly used in everyday technology to enable or disable features, such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. It is also used to control settings, such as a light or dark theme on a website or application. Toggles are also frequently used to conduct A/B testing. By allowing a group of users to choose one of two possible configurations, we can compare the impact each has on engagement and conversion rates to find the best solution.

A simple toggle might be a button with an icon that is either a green checkmark or a red X. The green checkmark indicates that the feature is enabled, while the X means it is disabled. A toggle can be clicked to change its state, and it is often helpful to add contextual information that clearly shows the current state.

Toggles can be hard to use if they are not well designed. This is why it’s important to make sure that toggle switches are labelled correctly, that they use standard visual design, and that they are clearly differentiated from other elements on the page. Toggles can be particularly confusing for people who use assistive technologies, and if they are poorly implemented they may not work.

The best way to avoid confusion is to use a toggle that only controls something visible to everyone, such as a visibility toggle. This makes it impossible to accidentally disable a setting for some users while leaving others with the ability to enable it. Toggle switches are also more likely to be usable if they don’t require a user to log in.

Despite these advantages, it’s still important to carefully weigh whether to use a toggle in the first place. Toggles can be difficult to manage, especially if they are dynamic. They can cause performance issues, especially if they are backed by a database (which can lead to thousands or even millions of reads per toggle for rarely changing values). Toggles also introduce additional complexity into development workflows.

Generally, it’s preferable to keep our inventory of toggles low and to prune them as soon as their lifecycle has run out. This can be achieved through a process that is built into your management platform, or it can be done manually by adding code cleanup tasks to the team’s backlogs. Having too many idle toggles around can be distracting for the team and a source of confusion for users who aren’t aware that a feature is switched off.