How to use the Quick Settings menu on Android smartphones

The Quick Settings panel on Android is a dropdown menu of sorts that grants you access to features you will want to interact with often. This menu generally comprises of Wi-Fi and Cellular data toggles, a flashlight toggle, options for managing alarms, aeroplane mode, do not disturb, and more.

Accessing Quick Settings

You access this panel by swiping down from the top-right corner of your screen. In some cases, you might have to swipe twice, once to reveal the most important toggles, and once again to reveal the rest.

You simply tap on the setting that you want to activate or deactivate, and long-press for more options. You can also swipe from sideways to access additional panel pages that house secondary features like mic access, Nearby Share, QR code scanners, and more.

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Think of it as having multiple home screens, but for settings you want quick access to. The most useful feature of this panel — other than giving you immediate access to the most important settings, is that you can fully customise this panel with toggles of your choosing.

Customising the Quick Settings panel

To customise the quick settings panel, swipe down twice from the top-right to first open the panel. Then tap on the edit or pencil icon at the bottom-right of the panel to view a list of every single quick setting that can be placed in the panel. The settings that are already in the panel will be highlighted, the colour of course varying based on the theme and contrast mode that you’ve selected.

You’ll notice that this list is divided into two sections. The top section houses all the quick access settings that you’ve enabled and are currently visible in the quick access panel, and the list at the bottom separated by a row of text that reads “Drag here to remove” houses settings that are not in the panel.

To customise the quick access settings menu, simply press and hold on the item you want to move and drag it to the top or bottom section. Items dragged into the top section will appear in the quick access settings menu while the settings dragged into the bottom section will be removed.

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When dragging items into the top half, you can position the items in the list to determine the hierarchy in which they will appear. Hit the back button to save changes.

The quick settings panel is a handy tool for controlling your phone more easily. Do note that the method we’ve described above only applies to stock Android, the type found in Pixel phones, and the process might be a little different depending on which brand phone you have and the UI skin it is using.