The venerable Control Panel that served many versions of Windows operating systems since its inception in 1985 may soon see its demise, as Microsoft is officially mandating the transition to its newer Settings app in its place.
Settings Is The New Control Panel
In its support article, Microsoft noted that “many of the settings in Control Panel are in the process of being migrated to the Settings app,” and the users are “encouraged to use the Settings app, whenever possible.” Most of the commonly found settings have since been migrated to the new app since it was introduced in Windows 8, though Control Panel still lives on, for now, for “compatibility reasons.”
Microsoft hasn’t specified any dates for the phase-out process, but removing this piece of tool from the operating system is likely going to be a painful long road for Microsoft to undertake. However, as Ars Technica pointed out, the company changed its wording from “deprecated” to “migrated”, though it’s unclear if this means the tool will remain to simply serve legacy features for the foreseeable future.
If Internet Explorer is any indication, it might take quite a few more years before Control Panel is gone for good. Still, one can’t rule out that the software giant will take a more aggressive approach and forcibly phase them out in the next version of Windows, just like it did for unqualified processors in favor of Windows 11’s cut-and-dry TPM requirement.
Pokdepinion: Control Panel is far from the most user friendly tool, but it sure served well for power users over the years.
