A toggle is a switch that allows you to shift between two states or options. They’re often used in technology, computing, and programming to provide a way for users to change settings. When you activate a toggle, it switches to one state; when you deactivate it, it switch to the other.

In the article world, you’ll find toggles in the presentation view of articles (not the editing interface). They work by hiding sections and items that aren’t relevant to your audience. The toggles have an eye icon next to them, and clicking it reveals the hidden content. Toggles are most effective for showing only relevant content to readers, but they can also be helpful in providing a streamlined browsing experience.

Toggles serve as circuit breakers during code deployment, giving you a central way to disable features for a limited time or when latency is high. They’re especially useful if you’re using a trunk-based development approach and need to roll out new functionality without disrupting existing user experiences.

For example, imagine your team has a hard deadline for implementing new changes to the payment process within your app. But you know that these changes may cause some friction among your users, so you’d like to validate the changes with a smaller group before rolling them out more widely. This is where a feature toggle comes in handy. You can use a toggle to temporarily disable the existing payments feature for your Beta testers and ensure that the new features won’t disrupt other user flows in production.