A toggle is a switch that has two positions—on and off. It’s commonly used in technology, computing, programming, and communication to provide a way to change between different settings or options.
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A toggle can be implemented in a variety of ways depending on the specific requirements of an application or project. For example, if a website requires the ability to display information in both light and dark themes, a toggle can be added to allow users to customize their experience. Toggles can also be used to implement responsive design in web development—a method of creating websites that automatically adjust to accommodate screen size and orientation.
Another common use of toggles is to perform multivariate or A/B testing. By identifying cohorts and using the toggle router to consistently send each user down one codepath or another, teams can evaluate which variant produces the most conversions.
The primary thing to remember when implementing a toggle is that it must be clear which state is currently active. This can be done by using high-contrast colors and providing contextual text that indicates the current state. It’s also important to consider the societal and cultural implications of your color choices—for instance, using red as an on/off indicator may be counterintuitive for audiences that associate it with stop signs or traffic signals.
As a general rule, it’s a good idea to limit the scope of any given toggle. Large swaths of an app should only be controlled by a small number of toggles—any more than that can become confusing for the user and a nightmare to debug weeks or months down the road when changes in behavior are discovered.
Finally, a common practice is to centralize the management of toggle configuration by moving it out from static files and into some sort of centralized storage, usually an existing application DB. This is a lot less fiddly than managing the toggle configuration directly from static files and makes it much easier to ensure consistency across a fleet of servers, testers, and product teams.
Savvy teams also try to be proactive about removing toggles from the codebase when they’re no longer needed. This helps keep the inventory of feature flags low and prevents a backlog build up that can slow down production and testing cycles. Some teams even put expiration dates on their toggles to ensure they’re removed promptly once they’re no longer needed.
