Windows has had a dedicated Settings app since Microsoft released Windows 8 in 2012. But it hasn’t yet fully replaced the Control Panel, which was first introduced way back in 1985 with the launch of Windows 1.0.
Now it looks like Microsoft is taking some cautious steps toward killing off Control Panel for good.
In a recent blog post announcing the release of Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20161, Microsoft’s Brandon LeBlanc noted that one of the changes involves moving “information found in Control Panel’s System page into the Settings About page under Settings >System > About.”
That means that you don’t have to hunt in two different places to find information about your computer such as the processor, memory, device ID, and system type. And it also means that links that are designed to open the System page in Control Panel will now take you to the About page in the Settings app instead.
Other updates include a Copy button that will let you quickly copy and paste information about your computer and a simpler view for security information.
This is still only available in a pre-release build of Windows that gives us a sneak peek at upcoming features. And there still is a Control Panel in this build. So it’ll probably be a while before Microsoft is ready to actually pull the plug on the legacy feature. But it sure seems like the goal is to eventually have a single Settings app instead of two.
LeBlanc also has this request for Windows Insiders: “If you rely on settings that only exist in Control Panel today, please file feedback and let us know what those settings are.”
via Windows Latest
“If you rely on settings that only exist in Control Panel today, please file feedback and let us know what those settings are.”
This sounds like more of a threat than a request. “If you forget to tell us about some vital feature you only have to use when things are really broken, we’re just gonna ax it.”
There are still so many features that still require me to go into Control Panel, from sound to network. I’m just looking for feature parity, because having to name every little setting I use is going to be next to impossible. I really hate it when companies make esthetic changes that take away many significant features, especially if they’re for power users. I’m still mad about some of the really powerful features missing from the G Suite Admin console from the Material Design update like 4 years ago, since I still have to suffer without them today.
I’m still trying to learn where things are in the Settings app. The search feature works okay but I’d rather know where things actually are.
So many things need way too many clicks to get to or there are links in pages that take you to a completely different section despite being related. I feel it’s equivalent to the often avoided goto in several programming languages except it goes to completely different file because things are organized very badly.
From the user experience point of view, the Control Panel is still better.
I would not mind this if you could get to all the settings from the Settings app, however you can’t, and even most basic information is nested way deeper in Settings than in Control panel. If this is only about aesthetics, they could just push the modern UI on top of the existing control panel and call it a day, it would look like the rest of the system, and all settings are where they are supposed to be. But killing it altogether would be a very bad idea.