TIP: Drafts in Control Center

iOS 18 adds the ability to place controls for third-party apps in Control Center (how-to guide). Of course, Drafts 45 supports adding such a control to Control Center (or the control spots at the bottom of the Lock Screen).

The control Drafts provides is configurable and works like the existing Drafts Grid Widget. Each control you add to Control Center can be linked to one of the following:

  • Built-in Command. These are series of common quick-access commands, like opening to a new draft, search, opening the last draft.
  • Workspace. Opens the app directly to one of your save workspaces.
  • Draft. Links to a specific draft. If you have a scratchpad draft you access and update often, for example, you might want a directly link that always opens it.
  • Action. Opens the app and runs any action from your action list. Note that not all actions make sense to run from a Widget, but some, like ones to create a new draft from templates, or to otherwise kick off a workflow of some sort often do, see notes on actions in widgets for more details.

When you select the Drafts control to add to Control Center, you will be prompted to select what of these items you wish to associate with the control. Note not all options will be available by scrolling, you may have to search the options list to find items. You can, of course, add multiple controls to have more than one Drafts shortcut handy.

Control Center Icon Compatibility

Note that Control Center only supports display of SF Symbol images on controls. Drafts includes a large library of icons to associate with workspaces and actions, not all of which will work with Control Center at this time. If you select a workspace or action for a control and the control appears with a generic Drafts icon rather than the icon you expect to be associated with the item, this is because it is using an incompatible icon.

To fix this, edit the workspace or action, and re-assign it an icon from the “System” options in Drafts, rather than the “built-in” ones. These options are all SF Symbols and compatible with display in Control Center.

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