Composable Options tile ☂️ #8664
Description
Options tile has less usage that components such as Cards, Page header, and Tearsheet, but there are opportunities to make the component more composable overall. As noted in previous issues, adopters are looking for ways to configure Options tile with different components to create new ways to display settings.
The team has also discussed shifting away from an Option tile that is wholly clickable with an overlapping focus and clickable area with other controls – to a static background for Options tile that contains an accordion button to expand and a separate interactive element.
Recent data
- In code usage, Options tile is used in 21 repos, 19 IBM products, and 13,394 instances (as of Oct 2025). This makes it the 13th most used component in the Carbon for IBM Products repo.
- In Figma for 2025, the Option tile group (refactored) has 2,903 times total instances, inserted 7,578 times, and 176 detaches.
We should revisit the composability of Options tile to help teams create more flexible configurations while ensuring that the component is accessible through keyboard navigation (potentially tab regions or tab ordering). We've seen teams attempting to insert other components than Toggle such as Button or Dropdown or Date picker. What are the code/design/guidance impact?
Here are some very early thoughts about composability based on product team questions.
