Making sense of Settings in Windows 11

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WINDOWS 11 By Simon Bisson Settings is surely here to stay, but so are all Windows’ other settings tools. Each new build of Windows 11 moves more func
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Fred, fisher75, lmacri, Perq

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To each his own. For me, the way Microsoft is approaching this move is a failure. Settings will never replace Control Panel. The Networking function in Settings is extremely lacking. I use Networking and Sharing Center extensively to configure network settings and it is nowhere to be found in Settings. Devices and Printers, when you drill far enough into Settings to find it, is almost useless. I had to create my own shortcut for the tool using a shell command because Microsoft even redirected the Control Panel shortcut to its useless Settings dialog. There are a number of other settings that are the same way. Suffice it to say, Microsoft is attempting to take management of the Windows installation out of the hands of those who administer it, and trying to lock it down to function the way they want it to. Settings just doesn’t cut it for me.

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windbg, teuhasn2, Casey S, gwt10

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Donny H wrote:

For me, the way Microsoft is approaching this move is a failure. Settings will never replace Control Panel.

Agreed. And why should this stuff be split into two areas in the first place?!? It’s ridiculous. Maybe MS thought they could have a more user-friendly experience by changing over from Win7’s Control Panel to Win 10’s Settings menu, but ideally, this switchover would never have been started in the first place, or if they were set on it, it should have been completed (= no more Control Panel) within a couple years. We are almost nine years in from the release of Win10 with a Settings menu, and this Control Panel/Settings schizophrenia is still a confusing mess.

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I agree that the ongoing entropy is annoying, but I’ve discovered that I don’t need either the Control Panel nor Settings — instead, using Windows search is often an improvement over either one of them.

I know that when I started interacting with Windows 10 in virtual machines, I found that I could find settings I needed pretty reliably by searching, and sometimes, searching by specific values. It took another year or so before I finally moved my own working environment from Windows 7 to Windows 10, but I grew accustomed enough to searching in Win 10, that it wasn’t long before I found nearly all the capacities available in Windows 7.

The only limitation I’ve found with searching is that network settings are sometimes harder to find, and I tend to go to the Control Panel for those. But I generally use searching for nearly everything else.

As I’m preparing for transition to Windows 11, and knowing that Microsoft keeps changing the furniture of locations, I’ve found that I rarely use Settings, except for getting to Windows Update (because I’ve memorized that sequence), but beyond that, I don’t really care where Microsoft has decided to put a particular control.

I have to wonder what’s happening inside Microsoft, with their own employees, especially the ones that actually have control over these things. My hunch is that there are some that are firmly committed to the Control Panel, some that are enthusiastic about Settings (including the ability to move things around), and that there are some that don’t really care, because they rely on searching.

However, it is interesting that there isn’t enough push from Marketing to demand the end of the Control Panel. If it didn’t go away with the advent of Windows 11, I don’t think it will ever go away.

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Something I haven’t seen discussed in the past couple of editions, is the “God Mode” controll panel.

File folder (.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C})

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CraigSH wrote:

is the “God Mode” controll panel.

‘God Mode’ is all settings in Control Panel and Settings.

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Fred

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In the article, there was concern about adjusting links to the Settings app from the Start menu. Use the Windows key and the letter ‘i’ as in India to go straight to the Settings app, no Start menu needed.

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