Talk:Feature toggle

On 12 October 2025, it was proposed that this article be moved to Feature flag. The result of the discussion was not moved.

Requested move 12 October 2025

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (non-admin closure) Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 22:01, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Feature toggle → Feature flagFeature flag – Per WP:COMMONNAME and WP:PRECISION, “feature flag” has become the overwhelmingly dominant term for this software engineering practice in both professional and academic sources, while “feature toggle” is now a secondary synonym.

In recent years, authoritative and reliable sources have shifted to “feature flag” as the preferred name:

Web search / trend evidence: A [Google Trends comparison for “feature flag” vs “feature toggle” in the U.S.](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=feature%20flag,feature%20toggle&hl=en) shows that “feature flag” has substantially higher search interest over time (about 50x), reinforcing its broader adoption in the software community.
Martin Fowler, who originally popularized the concept, now uses the term *feature flag* interchangeably and notes that it has largely superseded “toggle”: see Fowler’s [Feature Toggles (aka Feature Flags)](https://martinfowler.com/articles/feature-toggles.html) (updated 2023).
Industry usage: Major software engineering organizations and tooling providers—including GitHub, Google Cloud, AWS AppConfig, and LaunchDarkly —all refer to the concept exclusively as feature flags in product documentation and technical blogs (e.g., [LaunchDarkly Docs](https://docs.launchdarkly.com/home/getting-started/feature-flags), [AWS AppConfig Feature Flags](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/appconfig/latest/userguide/appconfig-feature-flags.html)).
Books and references: Modern DevOps and continuous delivery texts—including *Continuous Delivery* (Humble & Farley, 2010), Accelerate (Forsgren, Humble, Kim, 2018), and Team Topologies (Skelton & Pais, 2019)—use “feature flag” as the standard term.

Moving the article to **Feature flag** will align with current reliable usage, improve search discoverability, and maintain consistency with related articles like Continuous integration, Continuous delivery, and Dark launch. The current title “Feature toggle” should remain as a redirect to preserve continuity and historical context. 71.56.154.8 (talk) 06:17, 12 October 2025 (UTC) — Relisting. TarnishedPath^talk 10:17, 21 October 2025 (UTC) — Relisting. Valorrr ^{(lets chat)} 16:10, 28 October 2025 (UTC) — Relisting. --pro-anti-air ––>(talk)<–– 21:07, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: The proposal message seems to be generated by ChatGPT or a similar generative-AI tool (Markdown is a sign of AI writing). I believe the point about Martin Fowler is a hallucination, as there is no indication that the linked article was updated in 2023 or that Fowler notes that "flag" has superseded "toggle." (He does use the two terms interchangeably in the article; that part is accurate at least.) Anon126 (notify me of responses! / talk / contribs) 04:25, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The article linked on Martin Fowler's site looks like it's not written by Martin Fowler, also, but maybe was meant to link here? https://martinfowler.com/articles/branching-patterns.html

That one is more up to date (2020), written by Fowler, and only uses "feature flag"

It looks like the rest of them are valid (for example, the Google Trends report showing much higher search volume for "feature flag", industry usage, books). 209.249.214.126 (talk) 15:49, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

+1 Markdown, curly quotes and "related articles like Dark launch", despite the lack of an article, though these could be explained as not looking at the preview and lack of knowledge of wikitext. --pro-anti-air ––>(talk)<–– 21:09, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Relisting comment: More consensus would be nice. Valorrr ^{(lets chat)} 16:10, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Scyadav, Prateekjohnson.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 21:07, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Merge to Software_configuration_management#Feature toggle neologism

Is there single IEEE/academic source other than Flickr blogs and Fowler publications?

See Software_configuration_management#Further_reading.

Ushkin N (talk) 06:14, 29 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Article Improvement

I'd like to improve this article. For example the second paragraph in the intro is cited incorrectly. Also I'd like to add some more info on the usage of feature toggles. Prateekjohnson (talk) 15:09, 14 September 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Prateekjohnson (talk • contribs) 15:07, 14 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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Image, meaning

Would this be an example of feature toggle:

? It says "[ ] Live update the last canvas stroke" which looks like a feature which can be turned on or off. Maybe we should add this image or a similar image to the article. --User123o987name (talk) 02:50, 17 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Typically an end user wouldn't have the ability to turn feature toggles on and off. Functionally, however, what you describe seems very similar. Faught (talk) 23:58, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]