Last week, Microsoft mentioned in a support document that it was formally deprecating Windows’ 39-year-old Control Panel applets. But following widespread reporting of the change, Microsoft has either backtracked or clarified its language to remove the note about Control Panel being deprecated in favor of the Settings app. Here’s what the original post said, as also preserved by the Internet Wayback Machine (emphasis ours):
“The Control Panel is a feature that’s been part of Windows for a long time. It provides a centralized location to view and manipulate system settings and controls,” the support page explains. “Through a series of applets, you can adjust various options ranging from system time and date to hardware settings, network configurations, and more. The Control Panel is in the process of being deprecated in favor of the Settings app, which offers a more modern and streamlined experience.”
The current version of the page has changed that last sentence considerably. It now says that “many of the settings in Control Panel are in the process of being migrated to the Settings app, which offers a more modern and streamlined experience.”
It’s not clear whether this reflects a policy change or just a clarification of language. We’ve asked Microsoft whether it has changed plans to deprecate the Control Pane or if the original version of the support page was just incorrect in the first place, and we’ll update if we receive a response.
Backtracks, for now
Haven’t many settings in the control panel been in the process of being migrated to the settings app for the last uh, 15 years?
I mean good for ya’ll at Microsoft, but
It really feels like it shouldn’t be THAT hard of a thing to do: I mean shit, we’re 4 major releases into this, and they somehow managed to put all the features in the original control panel in uh, one release.
Well sure, but what about all the ad spots that wouldn’t have been added?
you need to keep in mind that microsoft is a small business, so they don’t have a lot of resorces to assign to this
I think this is likely to be what I saw others mention on earlier posts. Lots of enterprise or business software that hooks into the control panel.
So even if Microsoft does migrate all the Windows options over to settings there’s still going to be software that uses control panel to manage their own settings.
Unless Microsoft is going to make it possible to hook into the new settings app just as easily then they’re going to have to keep the old one around even though they keep crippling it.
They’re probably just going to disable it for manual access and add a regkey that you can add to regain access. (They’ve done the same for other ‘deprecated’ features)
Yeah it’s annoying as hell, wish they’d stop killing their own OS. I honestly think the first few builds of Windows 11 were a decent step in the right direction in terms of actually getting everything feeling relatively cohesive again. But the AI push and everything that happened right after release has started to let the rot creep back in again.
Next GPU I get I’m just going to run Linux as my main OS and have a VM with a GPU pass through so I can stop losing my mind.
I’ve been thinking about testing that myself. There’s a few things that are just a little more intuitive for me on Windows versus Linux, and for the handful of games that prefer Windows configuration or makes it easier to game on Windows might be handy to have a way to access Windows without it being my daily driver.
Then again, I have multiple computers and I already run Linux on my laptop which is the primary device that I use, I’m just talking about my game / audio workstation.
the Settings app, which offers a more modern and streamlined experience.
tl: “modern” means “less usable UI” and “streamlined” means “less functionality”
Less functionality as in “unable to open more than one panel at a time”
I stg Windows, every new UI is aggravating half-baked drivel.
(obligatory remark about the fact I mostly use Linux here)
I’d classify that as under “less usable UI”. There’s two different concepts in interface design: utility (i.e. can it do what you need it to) and usability (i.e. how easy and effective to use is it).
With utility/“less functionality” I was thinking about people saying they have to still open Control Panel because the “new” Settings still can’t do everything Control Panel can do after what, 12 years?
It’s somewhat bizarre to me that the settings menu isn’t just a reskinned control panel that either launches the new or old items depending on what they’ve finished so far.
I can’t imagine what they’ve done is easier than rewriting control panel items in full one by one.
You can do a halfway decent job of modernizing just by having an “advanced” toggle that shows the more arcane/less used settings.
I understand the desire to race towards a minimum viable product and get the core functionality into the glossy new thing, but they already had a minimum viable product in the control panel.
“deprecated” doesn’t usually mean removed, just that new things shouldn’t use it because they may remove it at some unspecified time in the future. Some programming languages have had deprecated features for over a decade.
