Equivariant derived category of a reductive group as a categorical center

Abstract: We prove that the adjoint equivariant derived category of a reductive group $G$ is equivalent to the appropriately defined monoidal center of the torus-equivariant version of the Hecke category. We use this to give new proofs, independent of sheaf-theoretic set up, of the fact that the Drinfeld center of the abelian Hecke category is equivalent to the abelian category of unipotent character sheaves; and of a characterization of strongly-central sheaves on the torus.