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What Is a Togle?

In computer technology a toggle is a switch that has two states, on and off. In a more figurative sense, it means “switch or alternate.” It’s similar to the way you switch between screens in video chat applications.

A Togle Control

In general, toggles are best used when changing system settings or preferences. They’re also popular for mobile devices because they take less screen estate than radio buttons, and can be easily adjusted by tapping a button.

Labels

Toggle labels should be direct and clear, and they should tell users what will happen when the switch is on or off. Toggle switches should look like sliders, and they should use visual cues to make the switch move and change color to avoid confusion.

Release Toggles

A good CI/CD team will always want to remove toggles that don’t have much value for the application. They’ll put a toggle removal task on their backlog, and sometimes even set “expiration dates” on their feature flags.

Configuration

Most toggle configuration is best managed in static files. But this can become cumbersome as the number of toggles grows.

Many CI/CD teams prefer to have their toggle configuration stored in a centralized store, often an existing application DB. This allows system operators, testers and product managers to view and modify toggle configuration.

Experiment Toggles

A common use case for experiment toggles is to use them in multivariate or A/B testing. In these cases, a user can be placed into one of two cohorts and each time they run a test the toggle router will send them down either path depending on which cohort they are in.