A toggle is a small piece of wood or plastic that is sewn to something like a coat or bag and is pushed through a loop or hole to fasten it. It is also a control element in computer and other machines.
Using toggles to update preferences, settings, or other types of information is often an acceptable alternative to a traditional user interface element like a checkbox or radio button. As long as the toggles are easy to understand (e.g., direct labels, standard visual design), use common sense for the context, and deliver immediate results, this approach should be okay.
Toggle is a good option for product teams looking to validate new functionality with a small subset of their users before rolling out to the full audience. It’s a simple way to reduce the risk that a change will be negatively received by users, and it is much faster than developing code in a separate branch and merging it back into trunk.
Toggle is also an important feature for A/B testing and other types of data-driven optimizations. For example, an e-commerce company might decide to run an experiment to determine which of two different suggestion algorithms delivers the best experience for their users. Toggle routes each user to one of the two algorithm codepaths, and after a certain amount of time the team can compare performance and make a data-driven decision about which path to roll out to all users.
