I personally had not heard this but it does sound intuitive to me. A checkbox is literally something you would check on a form (i.e. piece of paper) before handing it in. A switch on the other hand, it something that offers immediate feedback in the real world.
It’s a useful distinction but frustrating to apply in practice because we don’t have a similar convention for many other UI elements like input fields and date pickers. You can’t tell at a glance whether these will produce an effect immediately after entering a value, or whether there is a separate submission action.
In terms of primitive types and common UI platforms, we have this immediate/deferred distinction for booleans and enums.
Booleans are represented by checkboxes vs. switches as already discussed. And enums are represented by radio buttons (the traditional form element) vs. multi-part buttons (which Apple calls segmented controls).
Idk. There are enough switches that don't have an immediately noticeable effect, e.g. when you have to open a panel to turn things on or off, or when you have to go to another room. It's always hard to come up with the perfect definition/metaphor, but perhaps it's more like an operation that has a lasting effect.
But like designers shouldn't overdesign, we shouldn't overthink what's "correct" use. If it works and/or feels natural, it's ok. If it doesn't, it's time to consider alternatives, but you shouldn't implement them because some rule says so.
