{"id":518716,"date":"2026-04-08T02:19:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T02:19:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/518716\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T02:19:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T02:19:13","slug":"microsoft-explains-why-it-still-cant-fully-kill-control-panel-in-windows-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/518716\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft explains why it still can\u2019t fully kill Control Panel in Windows 11"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Microsoft<\/a>Microsoft confirms it’s migrating all Control Panel settings to Windows 11 Settings app but there are roadblocks<\/p>\n

Microsoft is finally migrating all settings and controls from the Control Panel to the Windows 11 Settings app. However, phasing out the 40-year-old tool that can adjust all your computer settings won\u2019t be an easy task. Fortunately, the company is aware of this and is taking the necessary steps to avoid breaking any drivers or devices during the transition.<\/p>\n

March Rogers, Partner Director of Design at Microsoft, in a reply to a user\u2019s comment on his X post, has officially confirmed that<\/a> his team is \u201cworking our way through migrating all the old control panel controls into the modern Settings apps.\u201d<\/p>\n

The user\u2019s comment<\/a> was actually referring to the fact that the legacy Control Panel was superior to the Settings app in areas such as Network settings and Printer Properties, which still defaults to the Control Panel for manually adding a new printer or scanner, for example.<\/p>\n

\"AddingAdding a new device manually using the Windows 11 Settings app defaults to the Control Panel<\/p>\n

March\u2019s original post included all the new design changes coming to the Settings app in April<\/a>, along with a few additional features. This month, several Settings pages are getting redesigned for clarity, the account dialogue box is getting dark mode, and the Pen settings page is also getting a few improvements.<\/p>\n

However, as the X user noted under the Design Lead\u2019s post, there are several things that need to be fixed if Microsoft wants everyone to use the modern Settings app.<\/p>\n

\"Microsoft'sMicrosoft\u2019s Partner Director of Design says they are migrating all Control Panel settings to Windows 11 Settings app
\nMicrosoft explains why it just can\u2019t kill Control Panel<\/p>\n

March Rogers mentions that Microsoft is migrating all Control Panel controls to the Settings app carefully, which essentially means that there are a lot of things at stake and that the Windows development team is aware of it.<\/p>\n

\"Control<\/p>\n

Unlike macOS, which depreciates legacy drivers and old hardware support courtesy of its low market share, Windows has always supported decades-old devices and drivers, which has now become a double-edged sword, as it\u2019s the exact reason why Microsoft just can\u2019t get rid of the age-old Control Panel.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re doing it carefully because there are a lot of different network and printer devices & drivers we need to make sure we don\u2019t break in the process,\u201d says the Microsoft Design lead.<\/p>\n

\"SomeSome network settings are still tied to the Control Panel<\/p>\n

March hasn\u2019t yet given a timeline as to when or if they\u2019ll finish transitioning all the Control Panel settings to the Windows 11 Settings app. But the fact that they\u2019re slow and deliberate about it is reassuring, because no one likes it when Windows breaks decades-old pieces of code, but they are all strangely complacent when Apple does it.<\/p>\n

In the case of printer drivers, for example, Apple has effectively \u201cdeprecated\u201d the old way of doing things by moving away from vendor-specific drivers (like HP or Epson), in favour of AirPrint. If a printer doesn\u2019t support AirPrint, it becomes a \u201cbrick\u201d on newer macOS versions.<\/p>\n

When macOS Catalina dropped 32-bit support, many drivers for older USB-to-Ethernet adapters, Wi-Fi dongles, and specialized networking gear simply stopped working.<\/p>\n

In Windows, adding old drivers and managing devices is a walk in the park, but it needs the Control Panel, because Device Manager, which is the primary place to manually install, update, roll back, or uninstall drivers, is still not part of the Settings app.<\/p>\n

\"DeviceDevice Manager can be searched in Settings, but it is a part of the Control Panel<\/p>\n

Yes, the Settings app does have support for managing peripherals through the \u201cBluetooth & devices\u201d page, but it isn\u2019t as intuitive and comprehensive as Device Manager.<\/p>\n

\"BluetoothBluetooth & devices page in Settings
\nThe Control Panel is now 4 decades old<\/p>\n

I like the Control Panel because I\u2019ve seen the same thing since my first days of using a PC, which was more than 2 decades ago. It just works. But it doesn\u2019t have the aesthetics of modern Windows 11.<\/p>\n

And it matters to me because I\u2019ve had enough of seeing design inconsistencies in Windows 11. It is so culturally embedded in our lives that there are memes about this.<\/p>\n

\"ViralViral post about UI design inconsistencies in Windows 11<\/p>\n

At this point, a transition to modern Settings is more than necessary, and it\u2019s great to see Microsoft finally working on it. But in the effort to fix Windows 11, Microsoft should make sure that the eventual transition from Control Panel to the Windows Settings app doesn\u2019t sacrifice the granular control provided by legacy tools like Device Manager, so power users can still troubleshoot complex hardware issues without being restricted by a simplified interface.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Microsoft confirms it’s migrating all Control Panel settings to Windows 11 Settings app but there are roadblocks Microsoft…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":518717,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[59,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-518716","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-technology","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}