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WINDOWS 11 By Ed Tittel The Settings app in Windows 11 remains endlessly under development, with the transition from Control Panel and Microsoft Manag
[See the full post at: Settings]

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rizzquery, fisher75, DLivesInTexas, windbg, rc primak, lmacri

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Bad Links in the article! All links point to a 7-year old topic in the Help section of the Forums, also called “Settings”.  Will Fastie has been notified by email.

-- rc primak

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satrow

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There’s only one link in the article and it works for me.

Perhaps it’s already been fixed?

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No it’s not fixed.  Right now I’m renaming the old forum thread so it won’t be linked.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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rc primak

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This link works for me:

https://www.askwoody.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/NL-2024-05-06-tittel-settings-diagram.html

Is there another link in the Settings article?

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The comment in the forum wasn’t working right.  Not the url in the post.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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rc primak, satrow, b

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Never understood why Microsoft never finished transitioning Settings completely from its Control Panel days. I use MacOS as well as Windows and Apple made drastic changes to its Settings by taking on a more IOS mobile look. Many disliked the change, but at least it was a complete change and not some Jeckel and Hyde mess created by Microsoft for Windows.

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Thanks for your comment. I like the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde reference!

=Ed=

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I find it deeply ironic that Microsoft continually touts its wonderful Windows GUI interface, yet with Windows 11 and the continued churning of the Settings structure and content, I can usually find programs I want more quickly by typing the program name into the search bar, or even by typing the task I want to do, rather than incessantly click-click-click-clicking to get to the program or function I want.

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Indeed: one of the big takeaways for me in researching the story was that search is the best way to approach finding stuff in Settings. That said, hitting exactly the right search key can sometimes be a challenge, so some familiarity with the overall contents remains helpful.

Thanks for your insightful comments.

–Ed–

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This excellent article illustrates what I believe is a deliberate strategy by Microsoft and other vendors of operating systems for any device you can name. Give users nominal control, but create an enormous mass of settings with obscure names not readily identifiable by the user. The user is then faced with using the default settings or spending hours (perhaps days) wading through all 1,143 settings, testing the results of each change one-by-one to learn what the setting does, and then changing each setting to reflect the user’s preference. Some of the more obscure settings can break functionality without warning the user. To add to the impossibility of the task, every update pushed to the device changes some settings back to the default without notifying the user, forcing another excruciating review to determine what has been changed.

This insidious practice benefits the vendor. The user is so overwhelmed with choices (many of uncertain effect) that the typical reaction is to leave all settings on default. Thus the vendor is able to perform intrusive data collection and push advertising while claiming that the user has “full control” over these activities through settings.

I gave up trying to wade through this labyrinth several years ago and rely on O&O ShutUp to make the changes for me. I do not know how reliable or appropriate the changes are, but they seem to stop some of the practices I find most annoying like notifications. I have given up changing settings on my cell phone. Once again, there are too many settings and no documentation concerning what each setting does.

Settings are a perfidious scheme to wrest control of the device from the user and place it in the hands of the vendor.

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Ed Tittel, rizzquery

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WUBRINY wrote:

Give users nominal control, but create an enormous mass of settings with obscure names not readily identifiable by the user.

If there’s an enormous mass of them, could you give some examples of settings which have obscure names?

WUBRINY wrote:

To add to the impossibility of the task, every update pushed to the device changes some settings back to the default without notifying the user, forcing another excruciating review to determine what has been changed.

Do you really find that every update changes settings back to defaults?

I can’t remember when that happened for me. (It may have done once).

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Ed Tittel

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If there’s an enormous mass of them, could you give some examples of settings which have obscure names?

I do not keep detailed notes. I am relying on memory. I am unwilling to spend time searching for the names of settings that I consider obscure to respond to your question.

Do you really find that every update changes settings back to defaults?

“Every” was hyperbole. I do not keep detailed notes. My statement was based on frequent reports (I cannot specify the frequency or identify the updates by KB number) from O&O ShutUp that system settings have been changed following installation of updates.

I think 1,143 is pretty enormous.

Am I putting too much faith in O&O ShutUp? That’s a judgment call.

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Ed Tittel

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WUBRINY wrote:

I am unwilling to spend time searching for the names of settings that I consider obscure to respond to your question.

It seemed you thought most of them were obscure (e.g. “(many of uncertain effect)”).

But if you “gave up trying to wade through this labyrinth several years ago” then you’d be unaware of any recent improvements in settings and “enormous mass of settings with obscure names” must have been hyperbole too.

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I am not finding that my settings are being changed.  There was some issues at one time, but now with the enablement packages, they don’t mess with settings.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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The only way I know of to really assess what’s going on is to snapshot the registry and the WinSxS folder hierarchy with “before” and “after” versions around individual updates. That provides a basis to create difference files that will show exactly what’s changed. But this is a big and tedious job and something that most users don’t even want to THINK about let alone implement for themselves.

I do think it’s fair to ask commenters to be respectful of each other’s opinions and experiences. Sniping at inaccurate uses of  “each” “every” “always” “never” and so forth is best reserved for the courtroom where such distinctions may actually make a difference. Here, we’re just trying to figure things out together.

In that vein, I will observe that I’ve been bitten by default resets in the past — e.g. for windows placement and sizing on one or both of my monitors after updates. But I can’t remember being so afflicted  in recent memory for either Windows 10 or 11 in the past 2-3 years. Upgrading from one version of Windows (e.g. Home) to another (e.g. Pro) can occasionally inflict interesting resets (Folder settings in Explorer, for example). But nothing too insidious or mysterious in my recent experience, either.

HTH,

–Ed–

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rc primak

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Ed Tittel wrote:

Sniping at inaccurate uses of “each” “every” “always” “never” and so forth is best reserved for the courtroom where such distinctions may actually make a difference.

No one did that. I just asked for clarification of “every”.

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Thanks for your kind words about this story. It was quite the adventure to research and write. Of particular note, the changes from PC to PC can be dramatic, especially for rapidly-advancing technologies such as Bluetooth, wireless networking (i.e. Wi-Fi), USB, and so forth.

Your observations about “return to default” after update is particularly on point, as is your recommendation of O&O Shutup (https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10) as an anodyne of sorts. I’m not sure the strategy is deliberate or malign, but indeed the net result is to “wrest control of the device from the user and place it in the hands of the vendor” as you put it so nicely.

Thanks for your comments and observations. You’ve added to the “information value” on this topic.

–Ed–

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rc primak

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Don’t forget “god mode” as Master Control Panel

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rc primak

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Thanks for your suggestion about God Mode in Windows 10/11. This is a special File Explorer folder that puts all Control Panel items and elements into one big list of options. I’m glad you reminded me about this as I’m preparing to follow up this story with another that deals directly with Control Panel elements (usually, .CPL files) and related Windows consoles.

For more info about God Mode, see this step-by-step at ionos.com or this Eleven Forum tutorial Add Control Panel to Desktop Context Menu in Windows 11 for more info on setting up and using the “God Mode” approach to control panel stuff.

–Ed–

 

 

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rc primak

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I didn’t know there was a Settings for the clipboard. Thanks!

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Happy to provide info not already in your ken. Thanks in turn for posting your comment. Cheers!

–Ed–

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Thanks for pulling this together; a simple and helpful reference.
I’ll be interested to see your follow-on article!
Best; —Linda

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You’re welcome. I learned a lot from walking through Settings systematically and completely. I’m glad you found it useful.

–Ed–

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Forgot to mention other programs I rely upon to control system settings: WuMgr, WinAero Tweaker, and Start10. I also use several snap-ins for administrative tasks including services.msc, diskmgmt.msc, gpedit.msc, and compmgmt.msc. Snap-ins still exist in Win10. I have not tried them in Win11.

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Thanks for your comments and sharing your toolbox contents with us. Indeed, snap-ins do still work in mmc.exe on Windows 11 (I just checked). As far as I can tell, the snap-ins list is the same for both Windows 10 and Windows 11 (with only a cursory, not a systematic comparison).

It’s safe to say that, as other readers have also observed, direct, hands-on management of Settings is a formidable and sizable job. No wonder so many of us — myself included — turn to tools to help deal with that complexity and the sheer number of items involved.

Thanks again,

–Ed–

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rc primak

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Great article about “settings” and “Control Panel”. First thing I do on any new install/computer, search control panel and open it. From there, right click the icon on the task bar and pin to task bar.

Don
t have to search any more. I also copy the “God Mode” shortcut to the desktop.

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rizzquery

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Thanks for your kind words about the story, and for your tips about pinning Control Panel and using the God Mode alias (see my earlier reply which explains the terminology and points to step-by-step methods to bring this to your desktop or the context menu).

Best wishes,

–Ed–

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I agree that Settings is a mess, and Microsoft isn’t doing anything to make things better. Some of it could be that there’s nobody really in charge, and where the maintainers of individual tools have a lot of ability to do things the way they want, without necessarily considering how it all fits into the overall Settings tool.

However, an important thing that isn’t mentioned here is what can be done with Windows searching. Even though I have Cortana, links to Bing and anything else Internet-enabled as much as I possibly can, I’ve found that rather than trying to fight through the navigation of Settings or what remains of the classic Control Panel, using Windows search is normally a reliable way to find most settings, and occasionally, it’s possible to find by searching a settings value, not just a name.

I agree that it’s not entirely foolproof, but it works often enough that that’s normally the first way I find something that’s not in a location that I have memorized. I’ve also found that searching works equally well, whether I work from the Windows search tool (normally just by tapping the Logo key and entering what I want — I don’t display the search icon or the search bar), but it also works through the search bar offered in Settings (Logo-I or Logo and select Settings), as well as the search bar offered in the Control Panel.

I think I didn’t discover this until I started interacting with Windows 10 (virtual machine implantation before I installed on a machine that I actually used), and once I got used to doing that, I found that that kind of searching worked all the way back to Windows 7. Thus, while I continued to use Windows 7, I developed the habit of looking for settings by search, even if it’s something that Microsoft has never really advertised.

It’s my suspicion that one of the contributing factors in the ongoing entropy of both the Control Panel and the Settings app is that inside Microsoft, a lot of the people who work in that area may be in the habit of using searching to find what they want, rather than navigation, with the result being that there’s low felt need to expend any real work of fixing navigation.

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wavy, b

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Wow! Thanks for taking the time to share your responses and reactions to this story. You make some excellent points, especially in presuming that there’s no “Settings Czar” around to herd all those cats in the same general directions. Your point about using search to navigate is well taken: I’ll talk to Will Fastie (site editor) about adding a paragraph on that topic to the end of the story under the heading “Do You Have to Navigate Settings at All?”

Thanks again,

–Ed–

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rc primak

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When I get a new computer it seems like I go through all of those 1,143 settings in order to turn “Off” everything I don’t want the computer to do, or do for me!

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Gosh, I really, truly hope that’s an exaggeration. But it does partially explain why so many businesses use customized images (or get them built by OEMs) to meet their particular needs and requirements. Thanks for your comment nonetheless.

–Ed–

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Good article. Settings is a mess.
I wanted to change the Screensaver settings. Could not find screensaver in Settings.

Finally did a search for screensaver. The search brought up the screensaver control and I was able to make my changes.

Note odd things about this adventure:
1. In the screensaver setting there is no way to go back through menu choices.
2. The screensaver setting is an orphan.
3. Control Panel was a more or less complete menu tree.
4. A menu tree or menu system is a set of logical relationships.
5. The Settings system is someone’s guess at what is useful.
6. Look at the classic menu in a typical Chinese restaurant (in America). You can find what you are looking for most of the time. It is logical. It is organized and consistent. It doesn’t change every 18 months.

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Thanks for your general comment (the utility of search in Settings is a godsend and/or a vital necessity) and for your observation about screensaver. It does indeed seem to be an “orphan” that is accessible only via Search. I can’t find a navigation path in Settings to get there, either. You’d think it would show up in Personalization. But it does not. Great catch!

Thanks again,

–Ed–

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In win 10 22H2, go to:   Settings > Personalization > Lock Screen

Scroll to the bottom and you will see a link  “Screen Saver Settings”

Clicking on that link will bring up the window for the screen saver.

 

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Windows 11 too.

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Sure enough. There it is. as shown in the attached screencap. Thanks for sharing. Shows why our collective wisdom rocks better than mine alone. Thanks again,

–Ed–

 

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Sorry folks! I went on vacation at about the same time this article posted, so I’m behind the 8-ball in getting out my replies to your feedback. Just wanted to provide an explanation for the delay, as I start digging in. Thanks!
–Ed–

PS: As of 12:47 pm I’m caught up on replies to all comments so far on May 14. Again, I apologize for the delay, but really enjoyed the driving impetus (we had a great family trip to Nashville, with all the trimmings…)

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