Toggle is a digital trade magazine highlighting the vital role that technology plays in companies and organizations across industries — and the men and women who make it work. We dig deep into the unique challenges these leaders face, from data privacy and cybersecurity to cloud solutions and emerging applications like artificial intelligence and machine learning. We also examine the critical relationships they have with their trusted vendors and service providers. It’s all to show that the IT department can’t function properly without the people and tools that keep the gears spinning.
In software engineering, a toggle is a switch that controls multiple settings at once. They can be used to turn on and off features for specific groups of users, to test an experiment, or to manage user flows. Toggle switches can be either a light-switch type or a multi-state button. Generally, toggles should be limited to a single set of conditions and have clear labels to avoid confusion for users. It is important to manage feature toggling carefully, as a simple toggle that’s tripped accidentally can create technical debt that will be expensive to resolve months down the road.
It is best practice to name your feature flags using meaningful names that describe what they control or what effect they have. This helps anyone on your team who might come across the flag later understand what it does if it is called out in an error message. It is also important to limit the number of toggles in a given area. Having too many toggles can cause code bloat, increase your maintenance time, and confuse your users.
