this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2024
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Last week, Microsoft mentioned in a support document that it was formally deprecating Windows' 39-year-old Control Panel applets. But following widespread reporting of the change, Microsoft has either backtracked or clarified its language to remove the note about Control Panel being deprecated in favor of the Settings app. Here's what the original post said, as also preserved by the Internet Wayback Machine (emphasis ours):

"The Control Panel is a feature that's been part of Windows for a long time. It provides a centralized location to view and manipulate system settings and controls," the support page explains. "Through a series of applets, you can adjust various options ranging from system time and date to hardware settings, network configurations, and more. The Control Panel is in the process of being deprecated in favor of the Settings app, which offers a more modern and streamlined experience."

The current version of the page has changed that last sentence considerably. It now says that "many of the settings in Control Panel are in the process of being migrated to the Settings app, which offers a more modern and streamlined experience."

It's not clear whether this reflects a policy change or just a clarification of language. We've asked Microsoft whether it has changed plans to deprecate the Control Pane or if the original version of the support page was just incorrect in the first place, and we'll update if we receive a response.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Knew it. They won't dare invalidate the 35-year-old government PDFs instructing people on how to enable their firewall or whatever.

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Someone found something that still depends on the control panel that will not be easily moved or done away with I bet.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

lol they’re all like “oh the control panel is old and broken, we’re totally taking it to modern streamlined -ville”

MSFT deveolper: “Uh, that modern streamlined -ville is the control panel. It’s the same code. It even has the same name. People will check you know.”

“Upon further reflection, what we meant was . . . “

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I for one would be fine going back to the ini files of win 3.1

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's still better than the registry. Or worse, some newfangled management abstraction that tries to be helpful but just makes everything opaque. Looking at you, systemd.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Systemd for Windows with the Windows Registry as a backend

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

They'll just do it anyway quietly later on

[–] [email protected] 62 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Then they would have to remove the various hooks in the Settings app that actually call and open the Control Panel.

How many are there? I can think of several (advanced mouse settings, advanced network settings, printer properties, date & time has a callout back to the old panel..)

Windows 10 came out nine years ago, so they don't seem in any particular rush.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Lol. I think they claimed that Settings was going to replace Control Panel when Windows 8 came out. It’s been 12 years. 😂

It’s long overdue for MS to shit or get off the pot. Either allocate some resources to this pet project or give up the pretense that it is ever going to happen.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Sound is in there too. The one that annoys me is the printer settings being under “Bluetooth” instead of “printers”.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 months ago (1 children)

"deprecated" doesn't usually mean removed, just that new things shouldn't use it because they may remove it at some unspecified time in the future. Some programming languages have had deprecated features for over a decade.

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[–] [email protected] 173 points 2 months ago (4 children)

the Settings app, which offers a more modern and streamlined experience.

tl: “modern” means “less usable UI” and “streamlined” means “less functionality”

[–] [email protected] 44 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Less functionality as in "unable to open more than one panel at a time"

I stg Windows, every new UI is aggravating half-baked drivel.

(obligatory remark about the fact I mostly use Linux here)

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[–] [email protected] 82 points 2 months ago

No no, "modern" means "includes blank space specifically for us to stick ads on".

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I think this is likely to be what I saw others mention on earlier posts. Lots of enterprise or business software that hooks into the control panel.

So even if Microsoft does migrate all the Windows options over to settings there's still going to be software that uses control panel to manage their own settings.

Unless Microsoft is going to make it possible to hook into the new settings app just as easily then they're going to have to keep the old one around even though they keep crippling it.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They're probably just going to disable it for manual access and add a regkey that you can add to regain access. (They've done the same for other 'deprecated' features)

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Yeah it's annoying as hell, wish they'd stop killing their own OS. I honestly think the first few builds of Windows 11 were a decent step in the right direction in terms of actually getting everything feeling relatively cohesive again. But the AI push and everything that happened right after release has started to let the rot creep back in again.

Next GPU I get I'm just going to run Linux as my main OS and have a VM with a GPU pass through so I can stop losing my mind.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Haven't many settings in the control panel been in the process of being migrated to the settings app for the last uh, 15 years?

I mean good for ya'll at Microsoft, but

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

And it's not even close to being finished

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (2 children)

It really feels like it shouldn't be THAT hard of a thing to do: I mean shit, we're 4 major releases into this, and they somehow managed to put all the features in the original control panel in uh, one release.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago (2 children)

you need to keep in mind that microsoft is a small business, so they don't have a lot of resorces to assign to this

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Honestly I'm waiting for Settings AI now with CoPilot which changes your configuration based on what you're doing, and only sometimes does stupid shit that you have to stop and sort out.

And then they'd have 3 control panel apps.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

You need to keep in mind that Microsoft developers are only allowed to do what the marketing department wants to sell. Unglamorous fixes and improvements are left untouched for years or decades.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Well sure, but what about all the ad spots that wouldn't have been added?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

True, I was forgetting about the Shareholder Value(TM).

Which is silly of me, because it's basically the only innovative thing Microsoft has done in the last oh, 20 years?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

Yea, like Recall. It's coming. They'll just do it silently without any backlash because people will be talking about the new pile of shit Microsoft is doing and also arguing like "no, they cancelled that, here's the link" to an article from 6 months ago.

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