Flashlight / Camera on lock screen

You don't. For the vast majority of people it is a very useful feature so you can use your flashlight in a hurry to light your way and quickly take a picture of ones grandchild doing something cute. And it has been on the lock screen for some time now.

You must have had a problem with your iPhone 8 or it was when you first bought it. It has been on on all iOS versions for at least 5 years now. Apple is not big on options but you can ask for a switch to turn it off by going here: https://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone/

I guess you have never had a need to quickly have a flashlight or take a picture.

Buckers9651 wrote:

It may have been available for some time on newer models, but not my old iPhone 8, so this is new. I disagree with it being useful but each to their own. The inability to change / remove is poor design and I will just have to hope it is rectified in a future update

I'm looking at it on my iPhone 7 with iOS 15.2.1 and all I have on the lock screen is cellular/Wi-Fi status at the top, a lock symbol, battery charge level, my chosen lock photo, the time, and how much charge (twice). There's a dot on the bottom with a tiny camera icon, and I can swipe left to bring up the camera without unlocking, but can only exit by tapping on the home button. But no way to access the flashlight without unlocking. Is that what you saw with an iPhone 8?

I can ask my wife if I can have a look at her newer (notched) phone as a sanity check. Addendum: yeah it has the flashlight and camera on the lock screen at the bottom.

I get what you're asking for, but unfortunately for you it doesn't appear to be programmable.

I do know they have been present with the iPhone X and later so it may have been added with iPhones with a notch, i.e Face ID.

So for at least 5 years now on those, I'm not sure about the SE, don't have one to look at. But regardless currently there is no option to turn it off but you can use the link I already provided to you to tell Apple you would like to have the option to remove them.

Just an edit: I made a mistake since I didn't have a newer iPhone to try this out on and thought you were referring to Control Center. Apologies for the previous reply.