The brand new Control Center feature of iOS 7 is certainly worth all the attention it’s getting. Similar features were made available on jailbroken iOS devices with famous tweaks NCSettings and SBSettings. These controls allow a user to toggle frequently used settings like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS as well as manage brightness and orientation etc. OS X has some of these same settings that are frequently accessed and you have to go through several clicks, menus, and options just to turn them on or off.FastToggles is a Mac app worth $1.99 that puts these settings just a click away. It’s a group of apps in itself that allow you to turn Bluetooth and Wi-Fi On/Off, toggle the visibility of hidden files and desktop icon, eject all mounted drives, empty the trash, lock your screen, log out, mute sound, open your downloads, Dropbox or Home folder, quit all apps, shut down or restart your Mac, and put the display to sleep.
The most convenient way to use FastToggles is to add the entire folder of apps to your Dock. You can then click any of the apps (after bypassing Gatekeeper for each one first), and it will toggle the relevant system setting or perform its respective function. Granted, it’s not reducing the number of clicks for some settings such as emptying the Trash or toggling Wi-Fi (if you’ve added it to the Menu Bar), but it does make other functions such as opening the Downloads, Home, and Dropbox folder easier, in addition to providing you with a single, convenient place for all these settings and shortcuts.
If you want to reduce the two-click process to just one click, you can add the individual apps to the Dock but that will seriously tax your space. Adding them to the Launchpad is one way to save space, but then it will take two clicks at the very least to toggle a setting. The concept of the app is quite good but we feel it could have been integrated better in a way that would reduce the number of clicks even further and make it even easier to access all these settings and shortcuts. We’ve reviewed apps like AppsBar that make the process of accessing your recently used apps ridiculously simple and, at the same time, mimics app switching from iOS. Until that adds support for such toggles and shortcuts, users can always set one of these apps to run by making use of Hot Corners.
