18 ms·

Microsoft formally deprecates the Windows Control Panel

325 points by mfiguiere 2y ago

terribleperson 2y ago
Can you even 'Listen to this device' without going into the old Sound Control Panel? Pretty sure you can't. I use this to pipe audio from other devices (e.g. game consoles) to a device (Roger pen) that transmits audio to my partner's hearing aid, because Windows doesn't have real tools for handling audio. Oh, what about when something goes wrong with a wireless driver and the only fix is disabling and enabling the device, once again in the old control panel? This happens sometimes when you sleep a Surface Pro 5. They've been trying to migrate to the new settings for 10+ years and somehow the result is that we have features that are exclusive to the new one and features that are exclusive to the old one.
IronWolve 2y ago
Progress like the metro interface and win11 taskbar, why not!
- decremental 2y ago
  My Windows 11 taskbar looks just how I liked it on Windows 10 and prior. Adjust your settings.
  - soupbowl 2y ago
    You can't move the new task bar to the left or right of the screen among other settings allowed in the previous version.
    - accrual 2y ago
      Also cannot change the taskbar icon size anymore either. I always enjoyed small icons + full taskbar button size as it allows one to have a larger target to click and see the window name all at once.
      - glenneroo 2y ago
        At least they finally re-added the "feature" (after removing it after many years) to expand taskbar titles instead of forcing MacOS-like icons on the taskbar with zero information other than a barely-visible red dot when anything happens, though I don't quite understand why it's sort of hidden inside the Taskbar behaviors list (inside Taskbar settings) which is by default collapsed, whereas Taskbar items and System tray icons are always open (and IMO you don't need to mess with those settings very often, at least compared to the Taskbar behavior settings).
        accrual 2y ago
        Nice! I didn't realize that was added back. Now I just would like 1.) small taskbar icons and 2.) ability to dock the taskbar on any edge. Agreed about the macOS dock. I occasionally use macOS as well and it kind of reminds me of a terminal bell in tmux, it just lights up for anything and everything. Windows at least has different colors, solid vs blinking, and even progress bars through the taskbar icon.
  - Gracana 2y ago
    Defaults enjoyer? It took them two years or so to bring back the taskbar settings I liked.
eej71 2y ago
A nice example of why even "small rewrites" seem to take decades.
- zamadatix 2y ago
  I think the time taken has less to do with the size of the rewrite and more to do with highlighting Microsoft's level of interest (from a business perspective, not an ideological one) in working on the control panel. E.g. in the same time period Microsoft has migrated and rewritten their enterprise chat platform multiple times across different architectures, frontends, and backends. That's not a point that large rewrites always only take a couple of years, it's a point that they were really interested in evolving their enterprise chat offering.
- LegitShady 2y ago
  I'm not sure if its about "small rewrites" so much as slowly changing so that there's less all at once rejection and pushback. It's change management.
- skydhash 2y ago
  You start to do a rewrite and then discover that the old design was the right one. But then you double down on those because "metrics" which oddly favors the team/company interests.
TulliusCicero 2y ago
But... don't the control panel windows have more functionality (and usability) in practice? I still go to "Sounds" even on Windows 10/11 because it's easier to read and seems to have more functionality.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
  You don’t enjoy the modern white space heavy configuration to be split almost multiple pages? Win10, I have to scroll to see the entire sound options on a single non-exhaustive page given the comically low information density. The new pages seem designed by someone who only knew how to build a vertical layout and just stacked all controls without a care for the user. I am also amused how the modern window takes a good second plus to paint.
  - hulitu 2y ago
    > I am also amused how the modern window takes a good second plus to paint. The number of pixels is increased since the days of Windows 3.1. Even notepad needs a couple of seconds to draw its empty window on a new mashine. /s
  - Baeocystin 2y ago
    My favorite part is how you can now only have a single page open in all of settings. Have a blocking dialogue box open? Too bad for you if you want to change literally anything else, gotta wait!
    - bitcharmer 2y ago
      What's actually mind boggling to me is that after so many years windows still uses plenty of badly formatted unresizable windows. Also no way to pin a window to top (in Z-order) even though we've had that on Linux for at least a quarter of century
    - HideousKojima 2y ago
      Or heaven forbid you want to check your network settings and your printer settings at the same time!
rock_artist 2y ago
They should first fix their search. The new settings are overwhelming and I end up having so many clicks when I need something like adding Hyper-V or add a Bluetooth device. Then, there’s the Windows search. If you ever tried using Settings and search. Most of the time you end up getting Edge opened with an outdated link or unhelpful Bing search. I just hope they won’t axe it until figuring out how they make decent settings.
- xg15 2y ago
  Ironically, the same company showed how to perfectly execute a settings page in Visual Studio Code: It's searchable, has a consistent and intuitive grouping, a simple way to get help for each individual setting and an import/export functionality. But I suppose, it's from a different department...
  - minkles 2y ago
    I'm not sure I could direct my mother around that...
  - Groxx 2y ago
    It also requires manual JSON for many things, which are also not searchable, nor assistive-tool friendly because it relies on individually navigating through a tree of autocomplete rather than viewing them all on a single page... vscode's settings are easily my least favorite modern pattern, and I am flabbergasted that it's spreading to other tools. The "it's one big scrollable list with a sidebar nav" is great in some ways, but everything else about it is downright awful.
    - troupo 2y ago
      I still don't know how to switch to the JSON-only view the few times that I need it. And I hate that quite a few extensions have a vague "just set X in settings" in their README's where X doesn't show up in the auto generated UI, and is called something else in JSON
      - 2y ago
Tomte 2y ago
Just use God Mode: https://www.tomsguide.com/how-to/how-to-enable-god-mode-in-windows https://www.tomsguide.com/how-to/how-to-enable-god-mode-in-w...
- clhodapp 2y ago
  It's good to know that exists, but having to rename a folder on the desktop to a magic incantation with a GUID in it is not an acceptable replacement for the previous control panel.
- a1o 2y ago
  That is pretty cool
- zamadatix 2y ago
  That's just a link to the "All Tasks" view of Control Panel with some extra characters stuck in front, not an actual separate mode. If deprecating the Control Panel only ever means the main Control Panel view and shortcut itself then that will be an alternative. If deprecating the Control Panel means eventually these views, and their associated tools, go away too then this will be no different.
  - tgv 2y ago
    It is a different list. E.g., the CP in my 11 Pro has just one panel under File Explorer Options, but multiple in the "God Mode" folder (which I recognize from the Explorer Settings). Some items in de GM folder open the same panel, though. Probably a hack for the search feature (a depressing thought). It's practical to have them in a straight-forward list. Plus now I can have a short-cut directly to the power scheme, event though it still won't let me put it in the task bar. Windows is weird, which makes me believe this list is never going to go away. It would be too much trouble.
    - zamadatix 2y ago
      > It is a different list. E.g., the CP in my 11 Pro Sorry, it probably wasn't clear - not everything in the All Tasks view is necessarily exposed in other views of the Control Panel. That doesn't imply it's something completely independent of Control Panel though, it means you can't get to all views of Control Panel by clicking from the main view. I.e. it's not that this doesn't list more things than the main Control Panel view will, it's that it's part of Control Panel which would also be removed if Control Panel is ever "actually" removed fully instead of just having the main shortcuts to it removed. You're actually pretty close with: > a hack for the search feature As the Control Panel search will indeed filter via this view since it has everything.
xnx 2y ago
Google (rightly) catches a lot of grief for having multiple overlapping products (e.g. Chat), but Microsoft should be equally shamed for having such a hodge-podge of overlapping configuration interfaces in their own OS. In Windows 11, there's really no telling if the setting your're looking for will be in one of the newer/flat interfaces or a classic Windows GUI window.
sleepybrett 2y ago
May finally have to give up windows for good. I mean I haven't done any real work on windows since mac went to osx .. it's basically just a game console at this point anyways.
- mjevans 2y ago
  For MOST of your gaming needs: https://www.protondb.com/ https://www.protondb.com/ Valve's done a LOT of good for moving the ball on Windows things just working (mostly) on Linux. Usually it's some form of DRM or video playback that doesn't work... for obvious reasons.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    By letting game devs ignore GNU/Linux, as Proton does the job, and they have better things to do, like targeting Android.
    - chipsrafferty 2y ago
      Except most games don't work perfectly on all Linux machines, so they are ignoring it to Linux users' detriment
- tapoxi 2y ago
  I finally started running Linux as my main (and only) OS after hating what Microsoft has done with 11. I'm not a Microsoft hater, and while I like Linux I'm not the type of person to play with new distros everyday or heavily customize my system. They finally did it. It works. I can just install Steam and play Hunt: Showdown and join a discord call. It's all I really wanted. In fact every game I want to play works out of the box, and there's dozens across various genres. For an example list: Guild Wars 2, Stellaris, Crusader Kings 3, Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, Baldurs Gate 3, Sea of Thieves, Halo Infinite are just some of the games I've been playing recently. Hunt recently shipped a major update and it broke Proton support. Within a day Valve fixed it and it now works fine.
  - 2y ago
alok-g 2y ago
I wonder if this will reduce the installation footprint of Windows or will rather increase it!
- nullindividual 2y ago
  CPLs are quite small and a small number of files to support it.
- accrual 2y ago
  I wonder if Windows will eventually move to an "image" based approach like macOS has done. When one updates macOS or iOS, you basically download a multi-GB sealed image of the OS and install it in-place.
  - IvanAchlaqullah 2y ago
    I'm pretty sure it's already done that, since Windows Update always lied on how many GB it download. It's very common (at least for me) to see "small" 700 MB update ended up having 4+ GB downloaded.
  - RiverCrochet 2y ago
    It does and has since Vista - the Windows install process has basically been a process that creates/formats the partitions, unpacks the files in a .WIM (Windows Image) file to the C:\WINDOWS directory, and configures the boot loader.
- dartharva 2y ago
  Nothing the current Microsoft does will ever reduce the installation footprint of Windows.
- h4ck_th3_pl4n3t 2y ago
  This will add another UI style, so of course it will increase the installation size. People need more scattered UI languages, not less! /s I wish Windows 7 was usable today, I'd switch back in a heartbeat. The peak of integrated and easy UI/UX on Windows was 7, and it went downwards after that.
russellbeattie 2y ago
It's actually amazing how old Windows is, and how many vestigial bits of ancient GUI versions are still a part of the OS. There's various levels of the UI: The newbie consumer level, the pro-user level, and the sys-admin level. The top is always changing, then the pro-user stuff gets updates after a while (always missing options which drives power users batshit), and then the low-level stuff which works fine and there's no reason to ever update just for looks. That's where you run into truly ancient designs that haven't changed since the 90s. Event viewer, remote tools, driver install, etc. And it's all still in there, using god knows what common .dlls from the dozen or so GUI toolkits that have come and gone. You have to admit, it shows an impressive longevity. I just have to assume that Microsoft doesn't prioritize updating those elderly dialog boxes and tools because it's a thankless (and profit-less) task, which takes longer than expected and always filled with crazy edge cases and gotchas. They spent several years just updating the command line - granted, that's an important app which touched a lot of the OS, but it just shows the perils of messing with stuff that already works.
- zamadatix 2y ago
  One of my favorites is "dialer.exe". I wonder how many have actually made a phone call with it on Windows 11. I'd expect more than 0... just not sure how much more.
  - russellbeattie 2y ago
    Oh, I'm sure someone, somewhere has based their entire workflow around that one program. [Insert relevant xkcd here]. Does Microsoft publish a list of most used system apps based on their telemetry? It'd be interesting to see the bottom of that list.
- becurious 2y ago
  It’s not only that but it’s also that drivers could ship custom property pages in an accompanying DLL. All using property page / dialog box classic Win32 technology. So unless you have a locked down device like a phone, you can’t magically port everything over to a new settings app without providing a path for your ISV / IHV ecosystem to migrate to on timelines that are sensible for the business. And ‘drivers’ consists of way more than hardware devices: database access drivers etc etc. Part of me wonders if an AI model couldn’t just sandbox the old UI and inspect it, and then auto map to a new settings style AI.
lofaszvanitt 2y ago
Vista is here, again.
glzone1 2y ago
All this engineering effort for what? The new settings stuff is materially worse than the old stuff. Part of me is just amazed at how slow large corps are - what does everyone do?? In so many areas the new stuff is not features complete or equivalent after years and years. And the usability is worse. And comically, despite going to a "modern" solution - the whole things runs SLOWER by far than classic settings which was near instant. So both they why for the change and the seeming insanely slow pace of getting the old working (again) on the new and improved are both questions I think. Sounds, printers, mouse, networking, user management and more - I feel like I'm always trying to fight my way back to harder to find classic control panels after trying to do stuff with the improved versions. For larger installs you used to be able to loin to audit mode, customize a profile and make it the default for new users. That was super easy for even non-IT folks to do to get a baseline setup that seemed to cover almost all settings. Now that's gotten "improved" into garbage as well. Instead we are getting UWP apps (mostly garbage) that can be hard to uninstall if provisioned in weird ways to a user.
- mrweasel 2y ago
  > And the usability is worse. This isn't exclusive to Microsoft, but it seems like all the research that went into Windows 95 isn't being repeated for new software. Windows 95, despite its flaws had actual UX research going into designing the project. It doesn't seem like that type of work is being done anymore, Apple also isn't exactly perfect here either, their new control/settings app is equally awful. There's is an aversion to making software boring, but functional, but that's what most of us need. Microsoft could have frozen their UI in Windows 2000 era and it would have been fine for the majority of uses.
  - da_chicken 2y ago
    There have been very few advancements in OS design for Windows that have really improved since Windows 2000. USB support. WiFi manager. Firewall. SATA support. 64-bit. Native TRIM support. Native antivirus. And some things like desktop search have just gotten significantly less usable over time. Win2k still very much feels like a nearly feature complete OS. It's got one of my favorite features: it shuts up and gets out of the way.
magicalhippo 2y ago
Especially in the networking section, there's tons of functionality you can only access via the good old Control Panel applets. In the Settings app there's only a "DHCP or no DHCP" option. No choice about DNS server info or DNS suffixes, no way to edit adapter settings (jumbo frames etc) and so on. Another example, regional settings, the Settings app only allows for some bare-bones customization. Want to add additional clocks? Can't do that in Settings app. So I truly hope this means they'll work on bringing that functionality over, rather than just removing the applets and let you sit there with the minimally functional Settings app.
- xtracto 2y ago
  Aaah the windows network applet. I still remember fiddling with ipx/spx settings in that interface. It's been several decades! Good memories.
- saratogacx 2y ago
  What is more likely is that the UI for those setting go away and you'll be told that to do advanced things you need to use the netsh tool.
  - bonoboTP 2y ago
    Which is not that bad honestly. As a power user, the command line and scripting should be easy to learn. That's how it works in Linux anyway.
    - JohnFen 2y ago
      > That's how it works in Linux anyway. But it's not necessary even in Linux. Many (most?) DEs offer control panels that let you do pretty much everything a normal power user will want to do.
- vel0city 2y ago
  > No choice about DNS server info or DNS suffixes, no way to edit adapter settings (jumbo frames etc) and so on. Hasn't been true for a while. You can get to all of that from the Settings app these days.
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observationist 2y ago
Yep, now's the time to move to linux. Microsoft has gone bonkers and is going to inflict a lot of unnecessary pain and frustration on people before they correct course, if they ever do.
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  It was time to move to Linux ever since Windows Vista ;)
  - herbst 2y ago
    To be fair XP was already digging it's grave while it existed. In my school time computer viruses were a legit excuse to not bring your homework that day because it was so blatant. Only switching to Linux could give you that peace of a actually working computer.
    - insane_dreamer 2y ago
      XP with Service Pack 2 is arguably the best Windows OS
summerlight 2y ago
I'm okay with some changes they're going to do as long as there will be proper alternatives. The new app is generally more confusing and less usable but I don't touch either that frequently so it is okay. My concern is that they're not going to invest into the proper, fully functional alternatives, maybe intentionally. And I suspect they probably want to use this deprecation as an excuse to take the control away from users, similar to other mobile OS. The new setting app lacks many important functionalities and usually redirects to old control panels. And MS can simply remove old control panels without giving us alternatives, or significantly restricted "modern" ones with less controls.
andrewl-hn 2y ago
Every single interaction with post-Windows 7 configuration / settings leaves me very frustrated. Some settings have new UIs, some don’t, often there are several generations of UIs for the same group of settings. Add to that minor revisions of the UI that happen as part of software updates. Finally, hardware vendors often have their own apps, various “Ninja Dragon Sci-fi Anime Nuclear Power Plant Control Centers” from graphic card vendors and some random sys-tray crap for your webcam and touchpad. I have no idea why things turned out this way, and I remember how with every other major OS release Microsoft promises a brand new rewrite, and yet if you dig deep enough you probably can find some UI from Win3.1 era.
- seabrookmx 2y ago
  "Services" and "Disk Management" UI's are great examples of ollllld (possibly MFC?) Windows UI's and are still the standard way to manage those settings from what I can tell.
  - akira2501 2y ago
    Start -> Run -> compmgmt.msc
  - jlarocco 2y ago
    I’m sure some UX idiot at Microsoft will be along to “fix” them any time now.
  - nrr 2y ago
    What's funny is I remember when those Microsoft Management Console snap-in tools were brand new, and what came before them was a lot less nice to use. (They might be MFC. Windows 2000 is about the right time for Microsoft to be C++ happy enough to push developers to use it over just using the bare Win32 C APIs. MMC was a pretty big deal when it first came out.)
  - winternewt 2y ago
    You can use Spy++ to look at the properties of open windows on your system. If the window class name starts with "afx:" then the application uses MFC. As far as I can recall I've never seen a Microsoft product built on either MFC or Visual Basic. They apparently don't like their own dog food. They tried doing stuff in .Net for Vista but had to revert all that; perhaps they've now come back to using it for real, but I know the new settings panel is done in C/C++.
rqtwteye 2y ago
Good! I look forward to not being able to adjust a lot of settings and a slower UI.
smileson2 2y ago
I feel like I'm the odd one out where I like the new settings now, I haven't had to use the control panel in forever there's lots of things I don't like about windows but it's not this
scrlk 2y ago
Setting file associations is the worst UX regression in the W11 Settings app. For example, say I want to set Irfanview to be my default application to view images. I need to go through every file type that Irfanview can open, then select Irfanview. I can't tell Windows just to use Irfanview for all the formats that it can handle. In the W7 Control Panel, this was a single click.
- yonatan8070 2y ago
  I never bother to manually set file associations, when I find a file that doesn't open in the right app I just use the "Open with > Other app > always use this app" option to set it
bc_programming 2y ago
This is because a particular support page has "The Control Panel is in the process of being deprecated in favor of the Settings app, which offers a more modern and streamlined experience.". Crazy how that somehow has spawned endless articles from tech "news" sites. But it's hardly news, and saying they've 'officially deprecated' is misleading. Fact is The Control Panel has been in the 'process of being deprecated' since Windows 8.
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Reason077 2y ago
Wish Apple would deprecate the macOS System Settings app! So clunky and slow in recent versions, it’s the only app that can make the latest M3 hardware feel underpowered and laggy. Yet still suffers from age-old problems like not being able to resize it’s window freely, which would at least help alleviate some of the UI weaknesses. Older versions prior to recent redesign/“improvements” were actually better…
- cisrockandroll 2y ago
  MacOS UX has remained pretty stable.
- galad87 2y ago
  It can be resized vertically, but the UI is lay out in a way that it doesn't make sense to resize it horizontally (not saying that I like that UI layout, but it has got a reason for the limitation).
jinwoo68 2y ago
I can imagine a series of events at MS like below (A pure imagination): 1. A new UX head is hired and looks for something that will make them look important. 2. Initiate a usability research across all the features in the Windows UI. 3. Make an internal announcement. "Our research shows that many users are scared of changing settings in Control Panel. They are afraid of breaking the system by changing anything there. We will create a new UX for changing settings in a simple, intuitive, and innovative way." 4. They hire many UX researchers, visual designers, UI prototypers, and of course many middle managers. 5. A year later, another announcement. "We now have a complete understanding of how we can create a simple, intuitive, and innovative user experience. Now our engineering team will implement this in upcoming years." 6. They hire many product managers, UI engineers, program managers, QA team, and of course many middle managers. 7. Two years later, another announcement. "We are launching the new innovative UX that replaces Control Panel". 8. Get a lot of internal feedback. "The new UI doesn't let me change X or Y setting", "The new UI is too slow", "Too much whitespace in the new UI", etc. They are all ignored as "working as intended". They say "X and Y settings are used by very few users. Use the old UI for those settings." 9. Several years later, "We don't have enough engineering resources to maintain two different apps. Let's kill Control Panel."
- lttlrck 2y ago
  Next up: Device Manager ;-(
  - bonoboTP 2y ago
    And Disk Manager... There were a few of these staples that I could always rely on to fix issues for friends and family. I remember them from 20 years ago and they kept working reliably. Since I've long transitioned to using only Linux both at home and work, I have no idea how to get anything done in these fancy new lean and modern "streamlined" UIs and am not of much help to Windows users. At least so far Control Panel was there but even so, some things were added only to the dumb new UI parts. I think MS managers may be forgetting how much their users have been relying on their IT whiz kid relative or friend. If you cull power user features, you indirectly make life harder for the average user too.
devinprater 2y ago
Thankfully, Linux is getting much better for blind people. Orca has become much more stable, and accessibility is more than an extremely underground movement within desktop environments. Just a bit more, and we'll be ready.
karaterobot 2y ago
> The Control Panel is in the process of being deprecated in favor of the Settings app, which offers a more modern and streamlined experience. Is modern and streamlined what I want in a control panel replacement? When I think of modern and streamlined, I think about things that are so simple they aren't useful anymore, because they've replaced the complexity of control over a messy process with the intuitiveness of only having the illusion of control over a messy process.
helf 2y ago
And replaced it with utter bullshit. I HATE the "Settings" crap. It's horrible. Fucking mess find anything. Half the functionality of the control panel applets are still not implemented. You essentially can't do more than one settings task at a time. I seriously want to stab whoever thought this was a good idea on the face.
- Aleklart 2y ago
  Everyone in MS consider it a amazing, awesome innovation that makes most popular OS in the world even more intuitive and user friendly. If someone (non-FTE) suddenly not thinking this obvious way, he is better to shut up, or he is not going to work in MS starting next financial quarter.
zdware 2y ago
Maybe it's time to finally try the Linux desktop. I mostly game hobby wise, and proton is in great shape nowadays.
user3939382 2y ago
For the last 15 years my first task on any new Windows version is to find the real control panel. Often I’m doing this to help someone with tech support on a version I’ve never actually used.
nitwit005 2y ago
Somehow I suspect this means fixing some problems will require finding out how to launch the old settings pages that are still there, but no longer easily accessible.
darreninthenet 2y ago
Any bets on how long before a 3rd party tool comes out that provides Control Panel like functionality... a bit like how the Windows 7-like Start Menu is still available for a quick download...
jmclnx 2y ago
They are really alienating their user base. Someone I know had their work PC moved to Windows 11, she has been swearing like a drunken sailor since about not being able to find things. She only cares about Excel a and email, but have been having a very hard time with 11. Once people finds out Linux User Experience with KDE does not change that much, people may start moving.
- bongodongobob 2y ago
  Their user base is large corporations. If she can't manage to find Excel and Outlook, I'm sorry but that's a skill issue. It's not that different.
newsclues 2y ago
I would pay for a modern win2kpro! But I’m tired of Microsoft nerfing windows that I only use for gaming
kjellsbells 2y ago
I feel that mourning Control Panel is misplaced. Microsoft would surely do better to build one UX for the normies and improve it rather than do a half baked job on two. The only mystery is why its taken so long. I can understand Microsoft wanting to phase the migration but its been 10+ years since Settings appeared. If there's a request I would make to Microsoft it would be to expose all the settings, consistently, in a single programmatic way. Powershell would suit me just fine for instance. This idea that powerusers can just unleash on the registry, apart from being an incomplete way to control all the settings, is wild.
- herbst 2y ago
  It's been 10 years or more where I learned to use windows. I haven't used windows since longer than a few minutes. The control panel is the last thing that was familiar to me. I am sure Powershell works great, but coming from Linux that feels like a badly designed pain not even shipping with a useable terminal. And don't get me wrong I hatet that control panel. But I was able to get things done without a lot of prior knowledge of the system.
- akira2501 2y ago
  > expose all the settings, consistently, in a single programmatic way. That is the registry. It has an API and everything. > apart from being an incomplete way to control all the settings Well, if you want "all the settings," so you have to accept 'all the complexity' that comes with that. A decent example would be VLANs. They offer a very complex configuration surface if you consider all the deployment and standard options combined with the fact that not all cards and drivers implement them in whole or in part.
feldrim 2y ago
I guess one can still use plan B, the ReactOS component for Control Panel: https://github.com/katahiromz/RControlPanel https://github.com/katahiromz/RControlPanel
somesun 2y ago
I often cant find the config i need , so I have to press "Win+R", and enter "control" and press enter to find it
MaximilianEmel 2y ago
I much prefer the old Control Panel myself, but I think it's even worse to have two system programs for doing the same thing. Maybe now they will finally have to improve their modern Settings app.
- Aeolun 2y ago
  The settings app has felt like a kludge ever since they introduced it.
  - altusbrown 2y ago
    It is. My ‘favorite’ is when technical help links in their own settings app links to useless web searches with ads.
dukeofdoom 2y ago
ChatGPT is so good at telling you how to configure something, that you should be able to tell windows what you want to do, and it should do it for you.
- amlib 2y ago
  Computer! Turn off the second monitor! Boss is coming! Sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that
userbinator 2y ago
Everyone knows gpedit.msc is the real Control Panel. /s I'm not surprised to see all the negative reactions. The old stuff was pure Win32 and thus very efficient in many ways. The new stuff is all UWP from what I understand (and UWP is itself supposedly deprecrated for several years now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28932345 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28932345), and much more abstracted and inefficient despite still being native code(?) I still remember the first time I opened Settings and saw a loading screen, which spent over a second to load a UI that somehow looks even less complete than the one in Windows 1.0, on a system with several orders of magnitude faster CPU and more RAM: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29586970 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29586970 The software industry has been on a quality decline for over a decade. This is just another datapoint in that sad trend.
bongodongobob 2y ago
UX change can be frustrating but what the fuck are you guys doing that requires you to be in control panel all the time?
scotty79 2y ago
I'd be way happier if they formally deprecated Settings in favor of Control Panel. MS stumbles upon any good design once per decade and has many times as much of failed experiments. Prefering old stuff is not necessarily nostalgia if you can't make anything good for this long despite trying. Every other windows is a wholesale failed experiment and forcing it to stay alive is a terrible idea. I have no idea why they kept Win8 start menu alive in Win10 instead of using the last good one, the one from Win7. They even had it in dev builds of Win10 and it was great.
gbertasius 2y ago
The amount of clicking around I have to do on the Settings window to get find where the hell things are is infuriating. Of course the search feature is just useless. I resort to Control Panel to just get most shit done. God forbid I need yo check a setting on another page and I forget how I even ended up on the page I needed.
croes 2y ago
>The Settings app was initially introduced in Windows 8 in 2012 as a touchscreen-friendly alternative for some of the Control Panel applets. How many people actually use Windows with a touch screen?
gexla 2y ago
I'm a Linux user, but used to have a tech support gig for Windows (mostly Windows XP.) On a "loaner" Windows 10 machine, I wanted to add an admin user, and remove the existing user. I couldn't figure out how to do it through the GUI. So, I did it through CLI commands in Powershell. Maybe now I'll be doing the same for whatever I would have previously reached for in the Control Panel. Though, my latest Android phone has been changing my behavior a bit. It seems every time I get a phone, the UI is way different from the last one. I don't bother trying to find anything in the UI anymore. Instead, the settings search has been working well enough in most cases.
system2 2y ago
I still use .cpl with run. appwiz.cpl and "control printers" are used daily by IT.
ExoticPearTree 2y ago
I swear, MS kills all the useful features in Windows. For comparison, configuring a network interface using Control Panel is simple, straight forward and allows me to change all the settings I want. Trying to do the same thing using the Settings app is complex, it hides pretty nuch all of the advanced settings that you want to see or change. And on top of that, it doesn’t even show you how long that interface has been connected to the network and how much data was transferred both ways: incredible debugging info lost. Oh, and the fact that you can’t tick which updates you want and which you don’t… I’m pretty sure others have other gripes with the “streamlined experience”.
- nolok 2y ago
  The main gripe is they seem to think we use it on a touch interface for tablet, so it makes no sense visually on desktop The second gripe is they seem to add features to it whenever they change something in windows, so older stuff that doesn't change because it doesn't need to is not in it
- imhoguy 2y ago
  I think the status quo Control Panel moves apart to dumb Settings and limitless command line.
- icelancer 2y ago
  The Windows 11 networking experience is beyond awful. It's incredible how bad it is.
  - ExoticPearTree 2y ago
    My problem is that it does this for Server versions as well.
    - minkles 2y ago
      We all learned to do it via powershell a couple of years ago because it's impossible to work out which thing to go to in the UI now. This sucks more.
butz 2y ago
If it keeps going this way, one day they will remove windows from Windows.
kombine 2y ago
Ok, Microsoft is killing anything that was good about Windows. Don't want to be that guy, but the Settings app in KDE is the best in class and can configure almost every aspect of the desktop environment. Overall, Plasma Desktop is a better Windows experience than Windows itself now.
wavemode 2y ago
Seems they've already changed the text in response to feedback. The quote in this article says: > The Control Panel is in the process of being deprecated in favor of the Settings app, which offers a more modern and streamlined experience. Whereas the current text of the linked page on microsoft.com now says: > 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.
chris_wot 2y ago
Gawd. Trying to find advanced sound settings the other day was awful. Microsoft is on a downward trajectory.
gloosx 2y ago
It was really funny to me last time I used Windows 11 – I was trying to find the devices system utility which is there from XP version, allowing you to see the connected peripherals, check their drivers, enable/disable them etc. I spent good 15 minutes clicking on every button in this new settings app, until at the very bottom of it, the "About" section of the settings gives a faint blue link to open "devices". What is this "About" even about? Does anyone know the logic behind this section's naming and why they put the link to devices dialog exactly there? MS insiders? Would be very interesting to know ;)
- pohuing 2y ago
  The easier way would be to right click the start button. That's been a thing for ages. Second easiest would be to search for devices in the start menu. But since you rarely use it it's tough to remember in the moment
cubefox 2y ago
I guess those settings are still more advanced than in macOS. Nobody seems to complain about that one, and Apple's market share is rising and rising. People vote with their feet, and they aren't voting for Windows.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- trimethylpurine 2y ago
  I think that's just marketing. As a decision maker, I care more what works. 80% of my tech support tickets for desktop help are from my Mac users which are only 8% of my endpoints. In my research, and experience, forcing Windows reduced calls and decreased costs because questions like "how do I send this file to..." and "how do I connect to this server" were eliminated. Further, SMB doesn't work very well for Mac users. Try opening a network share with hundreds of thousands of images. And last but surely not least, it's hard to secure company data on Macs because Active Directory integration is also broken. Sure, you use Apple's MDM solution, for added cost, complexity and training. Anecdotally, I've seen Windows users quickly move to the top of the company while their seniors using Macs stay at the bottom because they constantly have difficulty being part of the team. Problems with sharing files, joining meetings, color schemes and profiles that don't match their counterparts', etc. All these little things add up and make for a difficult career path to advancement when you're constantly the odd one out having problems sharing and showing your work product. Or, on Windows, I can deal with Google searches to find where a setting has moved to. I'll take the Google searches.
  - cubefox 2y ago
    I guess the increasing popularity of macOS is mainly due to private use while Windows still has advantages in company environments.
    - trimethylpurine 2y ago
      I think that's true. For private use, it's fine, except for the added cost. But overall, even there, I don't particularly see the benefit aside from the glamorous appeal. As an analogy, a Rolex is a great watch. Is it objectively a functionally better time keeping device than a Tissot or most any other time keeping device? Not really. But I'll concede, it looks great and it makes a statement that a lower cost device doesn't make. There is value in that. It's just that, for me, that justification doesn't weigh against practicality when considering the importance of a tool so critical to one's success and happiness in the modern world. I was a big Apple fan in the 90s when Apple's Motorola chips really did have a big advantage in productivity for graphics and video production, and even just raw computational prowess. Especially when coupled with the superior UX of OS 7 compared with the competition of the time. But, the modern hardware and software landscape is very different. I try to be objective enough to embrace the best utilitarian solution, regardless of brand or marketing. And, if I care about looks, Asus, for many years, was using the same manufacturer that Apple was. They were even sued over the similarities. Even today, several brands make Windows and Linux purposed hardware that meets or exceeds the optical appeal of Apple devices. I think Windows today fulfills the need for both personal and enterprise computing, while Linux fills the need for privacy and professional tech development. And each one does so in that respective category separately better than Apple does in either one. And that's considering all the flaws and glaring shortcomings and long running issues of both Windows and Linux (referring to desktop usage only), sadly.
_ink_ 2y ago
It's really mind boggling. Who at MSFT looks at the new settings app and thinks, yeah that's much better than the old one? Are they all high? Do they all have their own admin and never configure anything themselves? Do they even use Windows?
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
Probably going to be replaced by a set of obscure terminal commands, a la Linux.
vezycash 2y ago
What do you expect from Microsoft employees who use macs?
alkonaut 2y ago
Good. Should have happened earlier. The old one wasn’t perfect in any way. It could have been modernized slowly over the years instead of adding a new incomplete one. The jump between them becomes very jarring. But the new one has felt like a toy presumably because the old one could handle those grown-up jobs. But not having search(?), for example, makes the old one inferior no matter how familiar, dense, or “usable” the old one was. If I type DNS in the settings search then I have to find the DNS settings, it’s that simple. If one version fails this test and one succeeds then the ranking is clear regardless of the rest of the UX. But mostly I’m just going to come out and say it: I like redesigns and UX design is a feature in itself, while utilitarian design and familiarity is constantly overrated. Never moving anyone’s cheese is just catering to existing users at the expense of new ones.
- kasabali 2y ago
  > not having search(?), for example, makes the old one inferior no matter how familiar, dense, or “usable” the old one was. Control panel have had a working search function, introduced in Vista. It worked in start menu, too, and was very much polished in Windows 7, before they've introduced any of the "modern" crap.
  - alkonaut 2y ago
    As I remember that it was only matching bits of text that are displayed in the view and not all text within each panel (such as “gateway”) . E.g as shown here https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/90801i7DBC0C373A25E09D https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/image/serverpage/imag... I may be misremembering though.
havkom 2y ago
Windows 2000 Professional was the best OS ever. Only downhill from there.
ano-ther 2y ago
Control panel has a good interface showing both the sections (large) as well as detailed items. If you know what you want you can go to the details directly. Settings seems to be designed for touch screens that nobody uses. My laptop screen comfortably fits 70 lines of information. Settings gives me 17, less than a Commodore 64 which had 25 lines 40 years ago.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
perryizgr8 2y ago
Microsoft should open source Windows 2000 and let the community patch it up to make it secure for 2024. That was the peak of UI. We've never been able to reach that summit since then, on any OS, on any device.
Alifatisk 2y ago
Please tell me there is a way to keep this, I can’t imagine losing the good ol’ control panel
rfl890 2y ago
Control Panel -> Add or remove programs -> Microsoft Windows -> (right click) -> Uninstall
snozolli 2y ago
I was just thinking a couple of weeks ago how the new settings app is basically a bunch of text. Personally, I find it hard to navigate compared to colorful, differentiated icons. The whole point of icons - to encapsulate meaning efficiently - seems to have disappeared from modern UI. Flat lists of text are fundamentally what we had in the early 90s before advanced CUIs and GUIs took over.
Havoc 2y ago
Good. That part of windows needs to be nuked from orbit. Feels like every part of the UI was designed by a different team in isolation, glued together and shipped.
TheTxT 2y ago
Maybe they can finally allow us to open multiple settings windows at once?
ivanjermakov 2y ago
I'm so glad unix system configuration is just plain old text files.
1970-01-01 2y ago
I'm guessing it's formally deprecated in the exact same way CMD.exe was deprecated in favor of PowerShell. I expect another 30 years before someone actually guts it from the OS.
xwat 2y ago
There's no need to worry, I'm sure someone will create an open source equivalent (if there isn't one already).
spacecadet 2y ago
Noooooo. The only cool things left in Windows are Sandbox and WSL, but even WSL is a hot mess now.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
BLKNSLVR 2y ago
Every month or there is another reminder of how good a decision it was to switch to Linux on the desktop.
kapad 2y ago
I wish windows fixed it's registry. Documented where different settings are in the registry. And also streamlined the registry to be a lot more intuitive. UIs will build themselves around a simplified registry.

325 points by mfiguiere 2y ago

Can you even 'Listen to this device' without going into the old Sound Control Panel? Pretty sure you can't. I use this to pipe audio from other devices (e.g. game consoles) to a device (Roger pen) that transmits audio to my partner's hearing aid, because Windows doesn't have real tools for handling audio. Oh, what about when something goes wrong with a wireless driver and the only fix is disabling and enabling the device, once again in the old control panel? This happens sometimes when you sleep a Surface Pro 5. They've been trying to migrate to the new settings for 10+ years and somehow the result is that we have features that are exclusive to the new one and features that are exclusive to the old one.

IronWolve 2y ago

Progress like the metro interface and win11 taskbar, why not!

decremental 2y ago
My Windows 11 taskbar looks just how I liked it on Windows 10 and prior. Adjust your settings.
- soupbowl 2y ago
  You can't move the new task bar to the left or right of the screen among other settings allowed in the previous version.
  - accrual 2y ago
    Also cannot change the taskbar icon size anymore either. I always enjoyed small icons + full taskbar button size as it allows one to have a larger target to click and see the window name all at once.
    - glenneroo 2y ago
      At least they finally re-added the "feature" (after removing it after many years) to expand taskbar titles instead of forcing MacOS-like icons on the taskbar with zero information other than a barely-visible red dot when anything happens, though I don't quite understand why it's sort of hidden inside the Taskbar behaviors list (inside Taskbar settings) which is by default collapsed, whereas Taskbar items and System tray icons are always open (and IMO you don't need to mess with those settings very often, at least compared to the Taskbar behavior settings).
      - accrual 2y ago
        Nice! I didn't realize that was added back. Now I just would like 1.) small taskbar icons and 2.) ability to dock the taskbar on any edge. Agreed about the macOS dock. I occasionally use macOS as well and it kind of reminds me of a terminal bell in tmux, it just lights up for anything and everything. Windows at least has different colors, solid vs blinking, and even progress bars through the taskbar icon.
- Gracana 2y ago
  Defaults enjoyer? It took them two years or so to bring back the taskbar settings I liked.

eej71 2y ago

A nice example of why even "small rewrites" seem to take decades.

zamadatix 2y ago
I think the time taken has less to do with the size of the rewrite and more to do with highlighting Microsoft's level of interest (from a business perspective, not an ideological one) in working on the control panel. E.g. in the same time period Microsoft has migrated and rewritten their enterprise chat platform multiple times across different architectures, frontends, and backends. That's not a point that large rewrites always only take a couple of years, it's a point that they were really interested in evolving their enterprise chat offering.
LegitShady 2y ago
I'm not sure if its about "small rewrites" so much as slowly changing so that there's less all at once rejection and pushback. It's change management.
skydhash 2y ago
You start to do a rewrite and then discover that the old design was the right one. But then you double down on those because "metrics" which oddly favors the team/company interests.

TulliusCicero 2y ago

But... don't the control panel windows have more functionality (and usability) in practice? I still go to "Sounds" even on Windows 10/11 because it's easier to read and seems to have more functionality.

0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
You don’t enjoy the modern white space heavy configuration to be split almost multiple pages? Win10, I have to scroll to see the entire sound options on a single non-exhaustive page given the comically low information density. The new pages seem designed by someone who only knew how to build a vertical layout and just stacked all controls without a care for the user. I am also amused how the modern window takes a good second plus to paint.
- hulitu 2y ago
  > I am also amused how the modern window takes a good second plus to paint. The number of pixels is increased since the days of Windows 3.1. Even notepad needs a couple of seconds to draw its empty window on a new mashine. /s
- Baeocystin 2y ago
  My favorite part is how you can now only have a single page open in all of settings. Have a blocking dialogue box open? Too bad for you if you want to change literally anything else, gotta wait!
  - bitcharmer 2y ago
    What's actually mind boggling to me is that after so many years windows still uses plenty of badly formatted unresizable windows. Also no way to pin a window to top (in Z-order) even though we've had that on Linux for at least a quarter of century
  - HideousKojima 2y ago
    Or heaven forbid you want to check your network settings and your printer settings at the same time!

rock_artist 2y ago

They should first fix their search. The new settings are overwhelming and I end up having so many clicks when I need something like adding Hyper-V or add a Bluetooth device. Then, there’s the Windows search. If you ever tried using Settings and search. Most of the time you end up getting Edge opened with an outdated link or unhelpful Bing search. I just hope they won’t axe it until figuring out how they make decent settings.

xg15 2y ago
Ironically, the same company showed how to perfectly execute a settings page in Visual Studio Code: It's searchable, has a consistent and intuitive grouping, a simple way to get help for each individual setting and an import/export functionality. But I suppose, it's from a different department...
- minkles 2y ago
  I'm not sure I could direct my mother around that...
- Groxx 2y ago
  It also requires manual JSON for many things, which are also not searchable, nor assistive-tool friendly because it relies on individually navigating through a tree of autocomplete rather than viewing them all on a single page... vscode's settings are easily my least favorite modern pattern, and I am flabbergasted that it's spreading to other tools. The "it's one big scrollable list with a sidebar nav" is great in some ways, but everything else about it is downright awful.
  - troupo 2y ago
    I still don't know how to switch to the JSON-only view the few times that I need it. And I hate that quite a few extensions have a vague "just set X in settings" in their README's where X doesn't show up in the auto generated UI, and is called something else in JSON
    - 2y ago

Tomte 2y ago

Just use God Mode: https://www.tomsguide.com/how-to/how-to-enable-god-mode-in-windows https://www.tomsguide.com/how-to/how-to-enable-god-mode-in-w...

clhodapp 2y ago
It's good to know that exists, but having to rename a folder on the desktop to a magic incantation with a GUID in it is not an acceptable replacement for the previous control panel.
a1o 2y ago
That is pretty cool
zamadatix 2y ago
That's just a link to the "All Tasks" view of Control Panel with some extra characters stuck in front, not an actual separate mode. If deprecating the Control Panel only ever means the main Control Panel view and shortcut itself then that will be an alternative. If deprecating the Control Panel means eventually these views, and their associated tools, go away too then this will be no different.
- tgv 2y ago
  It is a different list. E.g., the CP in my 11 Pro has just one panel under File Explorer Options, but multiple in the "God Mode" folder (which I recognize from the Explorer Settings). Some items in de GM folder open the same panel, though. Probably a hack for the search feature (a depressing thought). It's practical to have them in a straight-forward list. Plus now I can have a short-cut directly to the power scheme, event though it still won't let me put it in the task bar. Windows is weird, which makes me believe this list is never going to go away. It would be too much trouble.
  - zamadatix 2y ago
    > It is a different list. E.g., the CP in my 11 Pro Sorry, it probably wasn't clear - not everything in the All Tasks view is necessarily exposed in other views of the Control Panel. That doesn't imply it's something completely independent of Control Panel though, it means you can't get to all views of Control Panel by clicking from the main view. I.e. it's not that this doesn't list more things than the main Control Panel view will, it's that it's part of Control Panel which would also be removed if Control Panel is ever "actually" removed fully instead of just having the main shortcuts to it removed. You're actually pretty close with: > a hack for the search feature As the Control Panel search will indeed filter via this view since it has everything.

xnx 2y ago

Google (rightly) catches a lot of grief for having multiple overlapping products (e.g. Chat), but Microsoft should be equally shamed for having such a hodge-podge of overlapping configuration interfaces in their own OS. In Windows 11, there's really no telling if the setting your're looking for will be in one of the newer/flat interfaces or a classic Windows GUI window.

sleepybrett 2y ago

May finally have to give up windows for good. I mean I haven't done any real work on windows since mac went to osx .. it's basically just a game console at this point anyways.

mjevans 2y ago
For MOST of your gaming needs: https://www.protondb.com/ https://www.protondb.com/ Valve's done a LOT of good for moving the ball on Windows things just working (mostly) on Linux. Usually it's some form of DRM or video playback that doesn't work... for obvious reasons.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  By letting game devs ignore GNU/Linux, as Proton does the job, and they have better things to do, like targeting Android.
  - chipsrafferty 2y ago
    Except most games don't work perfectly on all Linux machines, so they are ignoring it to Linux users' detriment
tapoxi 2y ago
I finally started running Linux as my main (and only) OS after hating what Microsoft has done with 11. I'm not a Microsoft hater, and while I like Linux I'm not the type of person to play with new distros everyday or heavily customize my system. They finally did it. It works. I can just install Steam and play Hunt: Showdown and join a discord call. It's all I really wanted. In fact every game I want to play works out of the box, and there's dozens across various genres. For an example list: Guild Wars 2, Stellaris, Crusader Kings 3, Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, Baldurs Gate 3, Sea of Thieves, Halo Infinite are just some of the games I've been playing recently. Hunt recently shipped a major update and it broke Proton support. Within a day Valve fixed it and it now works fine.
- 2y ago

alok-g 2y ago

I wonder if this will reduce the installation footprint of Windows or will rather increase it!

nullindividual 2y ago
CPLs are quite small and a small number of files to support it.
accrual 2y ago
I wonder if Windows will eventually move to an "image" based approach like macOS has done. When one updates macOS or iOS, you basically download a multi-GB sealed image of the OS and install it in-place.
- IvanAchlaqullah 2y ago
  I'm pretty sure it's already done that, since Windows Update always lied on how many GB it download. It's very common (at least for me) to see "small" 700 MB update ended up having 4+ GB downloaded.
- RiverCrochet 2y ago
  It does and has since Vista - the Windows install process has basically been a process that creates/formats the partitions, unpacks the files in a .WIM (Windows Image) file to the C:\WINDOWS directory, and configures the boot loader.
dartharva 2y ago
Nothing the current Microsoft does will ever reduce the installation footprint of Windows.
h4ck_th3_pl4n3t 2y ago
This will add another UI style, so of course it will increase the installation size. People need more scattered UI languages, not less! /s I wish Windows 7 was usable today, I'd switch back in a heartbeat. The peak of integrated and easy UI/UX on Windows was 7, and it went downwards after that.

russellbeattie 2y ago

It's actually amazing how old Windows is, and how many vestigial bits of ancient GUI versions are still a part of the OS. There's various levels of the UI: The newbie consumer level, the pro-user level, and the sys-admin level. The top is always changing, then the pro-user stuff gets updates after a while (always missing options which drives power users batshit), and then the low-level stuff which works fine and there's no reason to ever update just for looks. That's where you run into truly ancient designs that haven't changed since the 90s. Event viewer, remote tools, driver install, etc. And it's all still in there, using god knows what common .dlls from the dozen or so GUI toolkits that have come and gone. You have to admit, it shows an impressive longevity. I just have to assume that Microsoft doesn't prioritize updating those elderly dialog boxes and tools because it's a thankless (and profit-less) task, which takes longer than expected and always filled with crazy edge cases and gotchas. They spent several years just updating the command line - granted, that's an important app which touched a lot of the OS, but it just shows the perils of messing with stuff that already works.

zamadatix 2y ago
One of my favorites is "dialer.exe". I wonder how many have actually made a phone call with it on Windows 11. I'd expect more than 0... just not sure how much more.
- russellbeattie 2y ago
  Oh, I'm sure someone, somewhere has based their entire workflow around that one program. [Insert relevant xkcd here]. Does Microsoft publish a list of most used system apps based on their telemetry? It'd be interesting to see the bottom of that list.
becurious 2y ago
It’s not only that but it’s also that drivers could ship custom property pages in an accompanying DLL. All using property page / dialog box classic Win32 technology. So unless you have a locked down device like a phone, you can’t magically port everything over to a new settings app without providing a path for your ISV / IHV ecosystem to migrate to on timelines that are sensible for the business. And ‘drivers’ consists of way more than hardware devices: database access drivers etc etc. Part of me wonders if an AI model couldn’t just sandbox the old UI and inspect it, and then auto map to a new settings style AI.

lofaszvanitt 2y ago

Vista is here, again.

glzone1 2y ago

All this engineering effort for what? The new settings stuff is materially worse than the old stuff. Part of me is just amazed at how slow large corps are - what does everyone do?? In so many areas the new stuff is not features complete or equivalent after years and years. And the usability is worse. And comically, despite going to a "modern" solution - the whole things runs SLOWER by far than classic settings which was near instant. So both they why for the change and the seeming insanely slow pace of getting the old working (again) on the new and improved are both questions I think. Sounds, printers, mouse, networking, user management and more - I feel like I'm always trying to fight my way back to harder to find classic control panels after trying to do stuff with the improved versions. For larger installs you used to be able to loin to audit mode, customize a profile and make it the default for new users. That was super easy for even non-IT folks to do to get a baseline setup that seemed to cover almost all settings. Now that's gotten "improved" into garbage as well. Instead we are getting UWP apps (mostly garbage) that can be hard to uninstall if provisioned in weird ways to a user.

mrweasel 2y ago
> And the usability is worse. This isn't exclusive to Microsoft, but it seems like all the research that went into Windows 95 isn't being repeated for new software. Windows 95, despite its flaws had actual UX research going into designing the project. It doesn't seem like that type of work is being done anymore, Apple also isn't exactly perfect here either, their new control/settings app is equally awful. There's is an aversion to making software boring, but functional, but that's what most of us need. Microsoft could have frozen their UI in Windows 2000 era and it would have been fine for the majority of uses.
- da_chicken 2y ago
  There have been very few advancements in OS design for Windows that have really improved since Windows 2000. USB support. WiFi manager. Firewall. SATA support. 64-bit. Native TRIM support. Native antivirus. And some things like desktop search have just gotten significantly less usable over time. Win2k still very much feels like a nearly feature complete OS. It's got one of my favorite features: it shuts up and gets out of the way.

magicalhippo 2y ago

Especially in the networking section, there's tons of functionality you can only access via the good old Control Panel applets. In the Settings app there's only a "DHCP or no DHCP" option. No choice about DNS server info or DNS suffixes, no way to edit adapter settings (jumbo frames etc) and so on. Another example, regional settings, the Settings app only allows for some bare-bones customization. Want to add additional clocks? Can't do that in Settings app. So I truly hope this means they'll work on bringing that functionality over, rather than just removing the applets and let you sit there with the minimally functional Settings app.

xtracto 2y ago
Aaah the windows network applet. I still remember fiddling with ipx/spx settings in that interface. It's been several decades! Good memories.
saratogacx 2y ago
What is more likely is that the UI for those setting go away and you'll be told that to do advanced things you need to use the netsh tool.
- bonoboTP 2y ago
  Which is not that bad honestly. As a power user, the command line and scripting should be easy to learn. That's how it works in Linux anyway.
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    > That's how it works in Linux anyway. But it's not necessary even in Linux. Many (most?) DEs offer control panels that let you do pretty much everything a normal power user will want to do.
vel0city 2y ago
> No choice about DNS server info or DNS suffixes, no way to edit adapter settings (jumbo frames etc) and so on. Hasn't been true for a while. You can get to all of that from the Settings app these days.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

observationist 2y ago

Yep, now's the time to move to linux. Microsoft has gone bonkers and is going to inflict a lot of unnecessary pain and frustration on people before they correct course, if they ever do.

insane_dreamer 2y ago
It was time to move to Linux ever since Windows Vista ;)
- herbst 2y ago
  To be fair XP was already digging it's grave while it existed. In my school time computer viruses were a legit excuse to not bring your homework that day because it was so blatant. Only switching to Linux could give you that peace of a actually working computer.
  - insane_dreamer 2y ago
    XP with Service Pack 2 is arguably the best Windows OS

summerlight 2y ago

I'm okay with some changes they're going to do as long as there will be proper alternatives. The new app is generally more confusing and less usable but I don't touch either that frequently so it is okay. My concern is that they're not going to invest into the proper, fully functional alternatives, maybe intentionally. And I suspect they probably want to use this deprecation as an excuse to take the control away from users, similar to other mobile OS. The new setting app lacks many important functionalities and usually redirects to old control panels. And MS can simply remove old control panels without giving us alternatives, or significantly restricted "modern" ones with less controls.

andrewl-hn 2y ago

Every single interaction with post-Windows 7 configuration / settings leaves me very frustrated. Some settings have new UIs, some don’t, often there are several generations of UIs for the same group of settings. Add to that minor revisions of the UI that happen as part of software updates. Finally, hardware vendors often have their own apps, various “Ninja Dragon Sci-fi Anime Nuclear Power Plant Control Centers” from graphic card vendors and some random sys-tray crap for your webcam and touchpad. I have no idea why things turned out this way, and I remember how with every other major OS release Microsoft promises a brand new rewrite, and yet if you dig deep enough you probably can find some UI from Win3.1 era.

seabrookmx 2y ago
"Services" and "Disk Management" UI's are great examples of ollllld (possibly MFC?) Windows UI's and are still the standard way to manage those settings from what I can tell.
- akira2501 2y ago
  Start -> Run -> compmgmt.msc
- jlarocco 2y ago
  I’m sure some UX idiot at Microsoft will be along to “fix” them any time now.
- nrr 2y ago
  What's funny is I remember when those Microsoft Management Console snap-in tools were brand new, and what came before them was a lot less nice to use. (They might be MFC. Windows 2000 is about the right time for Microsoft to be C++ happy enough to push developers to use it over just using the bare Win32 C APIs. MMC was a pretty big deal when it first came out.)
- winternewt 2y ago
  You can use Spy++ to look at the properties of open windows on your system. If the window class name starts with "afx:" then the application uses MFC. As far as I can recall I've never seen a Microsoft product built on either MFC or Visual Basic. They apparently don't like their own dog food. They tried doing stuff in .Net for Vista but had to revert all that; perhaps they've now come back to using it for real, but I know the new settings panel is done in C/C++.

rqtwteye 2y ago

Good! I look forward to not being able to adjust a lot of settings and a slower UI.

smileson2 2y ago

I feel like I'm the odd one out where I like the new settings now, I haven't had to use the control panel in forever there's lots of things I don't like about windows but it's not this

scrlk 2y ago

Setting file associations is the worst UX regression in the W11 Settings app. For example, say I want to set Irfanview to be my default application to view images. I need to go through every file type that Irfanview can open, then select Irfanview. I can't tell Windows just to use Irfanview for all the formats that it can handle. In the W7 Control Panel, this was a single click.

yonatan8070 2y ago
I never bother to manually set file associations, when I find a file that doesn't open in the right app I just use the "Open with > Other app > always use this app" option to set it

bc_programming 2y ago

This is because a particular support page has "The Control Panel is in the process of being deprecated in favor of the Settings app, which offers a more modern and streamlined experience.". Crazy how that somehow has spawned endless articles from tech "news" sites. But it's hardly news, and saying they've 'officially deprecated' is misleading. Fact is The Control Panel has been in the 'process of being deprecated' since Windows 8.

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Reason077 2y ago

Wish Apple would deprecate the macOS System Settings app! So clunky and slow in recent versions, it’s the only app that can make the latest M3 hardware feel underpowered and laggy. Yet still suffers from age-old problems like not being able to resize it’s window freely, which would at least help alleviate some of the UI weaknesses. Older versions prior to recent redesign/“improvements” were actually better…

cisrockandroll 2y ago
MacOS UX has remained pretty stable.
galad87 2y ago
It can be resized vertically, but the UI is lay out in a way that it doesn't make sense to resize it horizontally (not saying that I like that UI layout, but it has got a reason for the limitation).

jinwoo68 2y ago

I can imagine a series of events at MS like below (A pure imagination): 1. A new UX head is hired and looks for something that will make them look important. 2. Initiate a usability research across all the features in the Windows UI. 3. Make an internal announcement. "Our research shows that many users are scared of changing settings in Control Panel. They are afraid of breaking the system by changing anything there. We will create a new UX for changing settings in a simple, intuitive, and innovative way." 4. They hire many UX researchers, visual designers, UI prototypers, and of course many middle managers. 5. A year later, another announcement. "We now have a complete understanding of how we can create a simple, intuitive, and innovative user experience. Now our engineering team will implement this in upcoming years." 6. They hire many product managers, UI engineers, program managers, QA team, and of course many middle managers. 7. Two years later, another announcement. "We are launching the new innovative UX that replaces Control Panel". 8. Get a lot of internal feedback. "The new UI doesn't let me change X or Y setting", "The new UI is too slow", "Too much whitespace in the new UI", etc. They are all ignored as "working as intended". They say "X and Y settings are used by very few users. Use the old UI for those settings." 9. Several years later, "We don't have enough engineering resources to maintain two different apps. Let's kill Control Panel."

lttlrck 2y ago
Next up: Device Manager ;-(
- bonoboTP 2y ago
  And Disk Manager... There were a few of these staples that I could always rely on to fix issues for friends and family. I remember them from 20 years ago and they kept working reliably. Since I've long transitioned to using only Linux both at home and work, I have no idea how to get anything done in these fancy new lean and modern "streamlined" UIs and am not of much help to Windows users. At least so far Control Panel was there but even so, some things were added only to the dumb new UI parts. I think MS managers may be forgetting how much their users have been relying on their IT whiz kid relative or friend. If you cull power user features, you indirectly make life harder for the average user too.

devinprater 2y ago

Thankfully, Linux is getting much better for blind people. Orca has become much more stable, and accessibility is more than an extremely underground movement within desktop environments. Just a bit more, and we'll be ready.

karaterobot 2y ago

> The Control Panel is in the process of being deprecated in favor of the Settings app, which offers a more modern and streamlined experience. Is modern and streamlined what I want in a control panel replacement? When I think of modern and streamlined, I think about things that are so simple they aren't useful anymore, because they've replaced the complexity of control over a messy process with the intuitiveness of only having the illusion of control over a messy process.

helf 2y ago

And replaced it with utter bullshit. I HATE the "Settings" crap. It's horrible. Fucking mess find anything. Half the functionality of the control panel applets are still not implemented. You essentially can't do more than one settings task at a time. I seriously want to stab whoever thought this was a good idea on the face.

Aleklart 2y ago
Everyone in MS consider it a amazing, awesome innovation that makes most popular OS in the world even more intuitive and user friendly. If someone (non-FTE) suddenly not thinking this obvious way, he is better to shut up, or he is not going to work in MS starting next financial quarter.

zdware 2y ago

Maybe it's time to finally try the Linux desktop. I mostly game hobby wise, and proton is in great shape nowadays.

user3939382 2y ago

For the last 15 years my first task on any new Windows version is to find the real control panel. Often I’m doing this to help someone with tech support on a version I’ve never actually used.

nitwit005 2y ago

Somehow I suspect this means fixing some problems will require finding out how to launch the old settings pages that are still there, but no longer easily accessible.

darreninthenet 2y ago

Any bets on how long before a 3rd party tool comes out that provides Control Panel like functionality... a bit like how the Windows 7-like Start Menu is still available for a quick download...

jmclnx 2y ago

They are really alienating their user base. Someone I know had their work PC moved to Windows 11, she has been swearing like a drunken sailor since about not being able to find things. She only cares about Excel a and email, but have been having a very hard time with 11. Once people finds out Linux User Experience with KDE does not change that much, people may start moving.

bongodongobob 2y ago
Their user base is large corporations. If she can't manage to find Excel and Outlook, I'm sorry but that's a skill issue. It's not that different.

newsclues 2y ago

I would pay for a modern win2kpro! But I’m tired of Microsoft nerfing windows that I only use for gaming

kjellsbells 2y ago

I feel that mourning Control Panel is misplaced. Microsoft would surely do better to build one UX for the normies and improve it rather than do a half baked job on two. The only mystery is why its taken so long. I can understand Microsoft wanting to phase the migration but its been 10+ years since Settings appeared. If there's a request I would make to Microsoft it would be to expose all the settings, consistently, in a single programmatic way. Powershell would suit me just fine for instance. This idea that powerusers can just unleash on the registry, apart from being an incomplete way to control all the settings, is wild.

herbst 2y ago
It's been 10 years or more where I learned to use windows. I haven't used windows since longer than a few minutes. The control panel is the last thing that was familiar to me. I am sure Powershell works great, but coming from Linux that feels like a badly designed pain not even shipping with a useable terminal. And don't get me wrong I hatet that control panel. But I was able to get things done without a lot of prior knowledge of the system.
akira2501 2y ago
> expose all the settings, consistently, in a single programmatic way. That is the registry. It has an API and everything. > apart from being an incomplete way to control all the settings Well, if you want "all the settings," so you have to accept 'all the complexity' that comes with that. A decent example would be VLANs. They offer a very complex configuration surface if you consider all the deployment and standard options combined with the fact that not all cards and drivers implement them in whole or in part.

feldrim 2y ago

I guess one can still use plan B, the ReactOS component for Control Panel: https://github.com/katahiromz/RControlPanel https://github.com/katahiromz/RControlPanel

somesun 2y ago

I often cant find the config i need , so I have to press "Win+R", and enter "control" and press enter to find it

MaximilianEmel 2y ago

I much prefer the old Control Panel myself, but I think it's even worse to have two system programs for doing the same thing. Maybe now they will finally have to improve their modern Settings app.

Aeolun 2y ago
The settings app has felt like a kludge ever since they introduced it.
- altusbrown 2y ago
  It is. My ‘favorite’ is when technical help links in their own settings app links to useless web searches with ads.

dukeofdoom 2y ago

ChatGPT is so good at telling you how to configure something, that you should be able to tell windows what you want to do, and it should do it for you.

amlib 2y ago
Computer! Turn off the second monitor! Boss is coming! Sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that

userbinator 2y ago

Everyone knows gpedit.msc is the real Control Panel. /s I'm not surprised to see all the negative reactions. The old stuff was pure Win32 and thus very efficient in many ways. The new stuff is all UWP from what I understand (and UWP is itself supposedly deprecrated for several years now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28932345 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28932345), and much more abstracted and inefficient despite still being native code(?) I still remember the first time I opened Settings and saw a loading screen, which spent over a second to load a UI that somehow looks even less complete than the one in Windows 1.0, on a system with several orders of magnitude faster CPU and more RAM: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29586970 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29586970 The software industry has been on a quality decline for over a decade. This is just another datapoint in that sad trend.

bongodongobob 2y ago

UX change can be frustrating but what the fuck are you guys doing that requires you to be in control panel all the time?

scotty79 2y ago

I'd be way happier if they formally deprecated Settings in favor of Control Panel. MS stumbles upon any good design once per decade and has many times as much of failed experiments. Prefering old stuff is not necessarily nostalgia if you can't make anything good for this long despite trying. Every other windows is a wholesale failed experiment and forcing it to stay alive is a terrible idea. I have no idea why they kept Win8 start menu alive in Win10 instead of using the last good one, the one from Win7. They even had it in dev builds of Win10 and it was great.

gbertasius 2y ago

The amount of clicking around I have to do on the Settings window to get find where the hell things are is infuriating. Of course the search feature is just useless. I resort to Control Panel to just get most shit done. God forbid I need yo check a setting on another page and I forget how I even ended up on the page I needed.

croes 2y ago

>The Settings app was initially introduced in Windows 8 in 2012 as a touchscreen-friendly alternative for some of the Control Panel applets. How many people actually use Windows with a touch screen?

gexla 2y ago

I'm a Linux user, but used to have a tech support gig for Windows (mostly Windows XP.) On a "loaner" Windows 10 machine, I wanted to add an admin user, and remove the existing user. I couldn't figure out how to do it through the GUI. So, I did it through CLI commands in Powershell. Maybe now I'll be doing the same for whatever I would have previously reached for in the Control Panel. Though, my latest Android phone has been changing my behavior a bit. It seems every time I get a phone, the UI is way different from the last one. I don't bother trying to find anything in the UI anymore. Instead, the settings search has been working well enough in most cases.

system2 2y ago

I still use .cpl with run. appwiz.cpl and "control printers" are used daily by IT.

ExoticPearTree 2y ago

I swear, MS kills all the useful features in Windows. For comparison, configuring a network interface using Control Panel is simple, straight forward and allows me to change all the settings I want. Trying to do the same thing using the Settings app is complex, it hides pretty nuch all of the advanced settings that you want to see or change. And on top of that, it doesn’t even show you how long that interface has been connected to the network and how much data was transferred both ways: incredible debugging info lost. Oh, and the fact that you can’t tick which updates you want and which you don’t… I’m pretty sure others have other gripes with the “streamlined experience”.

nolok 2y ago
The main gripe is they seem to think we use it on a touch interface for tablet, so it makes no sense visually on desktop The second gripe is they seem to add features to it whenever they change something in windows, so older stuff that doesn't change because it doesn't need to is not in it
imhoguy 2y ago
I think the status quo Control Panel moves apart to dumb Settings and limitless command line.
icelancer 2y ago
The Windows 11 networking experience is beyond awful. It's incredible how bad it is.
- ExoticPearTree 2y ago
  My problem is that it does this for Server versions as well.
  - minkles 2y ago
    We all learned to do it via powershell a couple of years ago because it's impossible to work out which thing to go to in the UI now. This sucks more.

butz 2y ago

If it keeps going this way, one day they will remove windows from Windows.

kombine 2y ago

Ok, Microsoft is killing anything that was good about Windows. Don't want to be that guy, but the Settings app in KDE is the best in class and can configure almost every aspect of the desktop environment. Overall, Plasma Desktop is a better Windows experience than Windows itself now.

wavemode 2y ago

Seems they've already changed the text in response to feedback. The quote in this article says: > The Control Panel is in the process of being deprecated in favor of the Settings app, which offers a more modern and streamlined experience. Whereas the current text of the linked page on microsoft.com now says: > 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.

chris_wot 2y ago

Gawd. Trying to find advanced sound settings the other day was awful. Microsoft is on a downward trajectory.

gloosx 2y ago

It was really funny to me last time I used Windows 11 – I was trying to find the devices system utility which is there from XP version, allowing you to see the connected peripherals, check their drivers, enable/disable them etc. I spent good 15 minutes clicking on every button in this new settings app, until at the very bottom of it, the "About" section of the settings gives a faint blue link to open "devices". What is this "About" even about? Does anyone know the logic behind this section's naming and why they put the link to devices dialog exactly there? MS insiders? Would be very interesting to know ;)

pohuing 2y ago
The easier way would be to right click the start button. That's been a thing for ages. Second easiest would be to search for devices in the start menu. But since you rarely use it it's tough to remember in the moment

cubefox 2y ago

I guess those settings are still more advanced than in macOS. Nobody seems to complain about that one, and Apple's market share is rising and rising. People vote with their feet, and they aren't voting for Windows.

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trimethylpurine 2y ago
I think that's just marketing. As a decision maker, I care more what works. 80% of my tech support tickets for desktop help are from my Mac users which are only 8% of my endpoints. In my research, and experience, forcing Windows reduced calls and decreased costs because questions like "how do I send this file to..." and "how do I connect to this server" were eliminated. Further, SMB doesn't work very well for Mac users. Try opening a network share with hundreds of thousands of images. And last but surely not least, it's hard to secure company data on Macs because Active Directory integration is also broken. Sure, you use Apple's MDM solution, for added cost, complexity and training. Anecdotally, I've seen Windows users quickly move to the top of the company while their seniors using Macs stay at the bottom because they constantly have difficulty being part of the team. Problems with sharing files, joining meetings, color schemes and profiles that don't match their counterparts', etc. All these little things add up and make for a difficult career path to advancement when you're constantly the odd one out having problems sharing and showing your work product. Or, on Windows, I can deal with Google searches to find where a setting has moved to. I'll take the Google searches.
- cubefox 2y ago
  I guess the increasing popularity of macOS is mainly due to private use while Windows still has advantages in company environments.
  - trimethylpurine 2y ago
    I think that's true. For private use, it's fine, except for the added cost. But overall, even there, I don't particularly see the benefit aside from the glamorous appeal. As an analogy, a Rolex is a great watch. Is it objectively a functionally better time keeping device than a Tissot or most any other time keeping device? Not really. But I'll concede, it looks great and it makes a statement that a lower cost device doesn't make. There is value in that. It's just that, for me, that justification doesn't weigh against practicality when considering the importance of a tool so critical to one's success and happiness in the modern world. I was a big Apple fan in the 90s when Apple's Motorola chips really did have a big advantage in productivity for graphics and video production, and even just raw computational prowess. Especially when coupled with the superior UX of OS 7 compared with the competition of the time. But, the modern hardware and software landscape is very different. I try to be objective enough to embrace the best utilitarian solution, regardless of brand or marketing. And, if I care about looks, Asus, for many years, was using the same manufacturer that Apple was. They were even sued over the similarities. Even today, several brands make Windows and Linux purposed hardware that meets or exceeds the optical appeal of Apple devices. I think Windows today fulfills the need for both personal and enterprise computing, while Linux fills the need for privacy and professional tech development. And each one does so in that respective category separately better than Apple does in either one. And that's considering all the flaws and glaring shortcomings and long running issues of both Windows and Linux (referring to desktop usage only), sadly.

_ink_ 2y ago

It's really mind boggling. Who at MSFT looks at the new settings app and thinks, yeah that's much better than the old one? Are they all high? Do they all have their own admin and never configure anything themselves? Do they even use Windows?

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago

Probably going to be replaced by a set of obscure terminal commands, a la Linux.

vezycash 2y ago

What do you expect from Microsoft employees who use macs?

alkonaut 2y ago

Good. Should have happened earlier. The old one wasn’t perfect in any way. It could have been modernized slowly over the years instead of adding a new incomplete one. The jump between them becomes very jarring. But the new one has felt like a toy presumably because the old one could handle those grown-up jobs. But not having search(?), for example, makes the old one inferior no matter how familiar, dense, or “usable” the old one was. If I type DNS in the settings search then I have to find the DNS settings, it’s that simple. If one version fails this test and one succeeds then the ranking is clear regardless of the rest of the UX. But mostly I’m just going to come out and say it: I like redesigns and UX design is a feature in itself, while utilitarian design and familiarity is constantly overrated. Never moving anyone’s cheese is just catering to existing users at the expense of new ones.

kasabali 2y ago
> not having search(?), for example, makes the old one inferior no matter how familiar, dense, or “usable” the old one was. Control panel have had a working search function, introduced in Vista. It worked in start menu, too, and was very much polished in Windows 7, before they've introduced any of the "modern" crap.
- alkonaut 2y ago
  As I remember that it was only matching bits of text that are displayed in the view and not all text within each panel (such as “gateway”) . E.g as shown here https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/90801i7DBC0C373A25E09D https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/image/serverpage/imag... I may be misremembering though.

havkom 2y ago

Windows 2000 Professional was the best OS ever. Only downhill from there.

ano-ther 2y ago

Control panel has a good interface showing both the sections (large) as well as detailed items. If you know what you want you can go to the details directly. Settings seems to be designed for touch screens that nobody uses. My laptop screen comfortably fits 70 lines of information. Settings gives me 17, less than a Commodore 64 which had 25 lines 40 years ago.

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perryizgr8 2y ago

Microsoft should open source Windows 2000 and let the community patch it up to make it secure for 2024. That was the peak of UI. We've never been able to reach that summit since then, on any OS, on any device.

Alifatisk 2y ago

Please tell me there is a way to keep this, I can’t imagine losing the good ol’ control panel

rfl890 2y ago

Control Panel -> Add or remove programs -> Microsoft Windows -> (right click) -> Uninstall

snozolli 2y ago

I was just thinking a couple of weeks ago how the new settings app is basically a bunch of text. Personally, I find it hard to navigate compared to colorful, differentiated icons. The whole point of icons - to encapsulate meaning efficiently - seems to have disappeared from modern UI. Flat lists of text are fundamentally what we had in the early 90s before advanced CUIs and GUIs took over.

Havoc 2y ago

Good. That part of windows needs to be nuked from orbit. Feels like every part of the UI was designed by a different team in isolation, glued together and shipped.

TheTxT 2y ago

Maybe they can finally allow us to open multiple settings windows at once?

ivanjermakov 2y ago

I'm so glad unix system configuration is just plain old text files.

1970-01-01 2y ago

I'm guessing it's formally deprecated in the exact same way CMD.exe was deprecated in favor of PowerShell. I expect another 30 years before someone actually guts it from the OS.

xwat 2y ago

There's no need to worry, I'm sure someone will create an open source equivalent (if there isn't one already).

spacecadet 2y ago

Noooooo. The only cool things left in Windows are Sandbox and WSL, but even WSL is a hot mess now.

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BLKNSLVR 2y ago

Every month or there is another reminder of how good a decision it was to switch to Linux on the desktop.

kapad 2y ago

I wish windows fixed it's registry. Documented where different settings are in the registry. And also streamlined the registry to be a lot more intuitive. UIs will build themselves around a simplified registry.