A toggle is a switch that has two states, on and off. It’s most commonly used in software settings and options menus where users can change preferences and settings. It can also be seen in hardware such as a cordlock toggle which stops or starts a cord or drawstring.
When toggles are not used carefully they can introduce cognitive problems for users. They can be confusing as there’s no obvious default state and they often look similar to sliders. Toggles can be made more user-friendly by providing direct labels and ensuring they look and behave as expected. They can also be improved by avoiding using color to convey state (as per WCAG guidelines) as this is inaccessible for some users with red/green color blindness.
Many teams take a proactive approach to managing feature toggle configuration by adding tasks to their backlogs to remove unused toggles. Others put “expiration dates” on their toggles to ensure that they get removed after a certain amount of time has passed. It’s also important to test all the possible toggle configurations which can be triggered with each release. This can help to avoid surprises down the road.
Some teams prefer to hardcode their toggle configuration through a preprocessor feature such as #ifdef. This can be a useful option when it comes to less dynamic flags such as Ops Toggles or Experiment Toggles. However for more dynamic toggles like those used in multivariate testing it can be a painful process to have to constantly manually re-deploy code in order to test a new toggle configuration.
