{"id":571709,"date":"2026-04-08T12:00:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T12:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/571709\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T12:00:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T12:00:07","slug":"why-microsofts-war-on-windows-control-panel-is-taking-so-long","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/571709\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Microsoft\u2019s war on Windows\u2019 Control Panel is taking so long"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">Microsoft first started trying to get rid of the Control Panel in 2012, with the launch of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2012\/10\/23\/3537710\/windows-8-review\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Windows 8<\/a>. More than a decade later, it\u2019s still working on migrating all the old Control Panel items into the modern Settings app in Windows 11. While there have been hints that the Control Panel might finally go away, the reality is a lot more complicated for Microsoft.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">\u201cWe\u2019re doing it carefully because there are a lot of different network and printer devices &amp; drivers we need to make sure we don\u2019t break in the process,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/marchr\/status\/2041138177818128454?s=12\" rel=\"nofollow\">explains March Rogers<\/a>, partner director of design at Microsoft. I could be wrong, but I think this is the first full explanation we\u2019ve had from Microsoft about why it\u2019s taken so long to get rid of the Control Panel.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">It looked like Microsoft was about to finally cut the Control Panel in 2024, after years of Microsoft <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2021\/12\/17\/22841028\/microsoft-windows-11-control-panel-changes\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">pushing aside<\/a> the Control Panel in its latest Windows 11 updates. But a support note hinting at the imminent removal of the Control Panel was quickly updated to confirm Microsoft was still in the process of migrating the Control Panel to the Settings app.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">Last year <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/news\/756958\/windows-11-settings-control-panel-update-mobile-app-notifications-start-menu\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Microsoft also migrated<\/a> clock settings, keyboard character repeat delay, mouse cursor blink rate, and formatting for time, number, and currency into the Settings app. There are also plenty of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2024\/5\/30\/24168191\/microsoft-windows-11-mouse-controls-control-panel\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">other mouse settings<\/a> in the main Settings app that let you avoid the Control Panel these days.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">I can\u2019t remember the last time I used the Control Panel thanks to Microsoft\u2019s recent mouse and keyboard improvements to the main Settings app, but a lot of Windows users used to prefer the legacy interface simply because you don\u2019t have to dig into multiple levels to find different controls.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">Microsoft is \u201cfocusing on design craft in Windows at the moment,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/marchr\/status\/2040510903951516126\" rel=\"nofollow\">according to Rogers<\/a>. The Settings interface is being \u201credesigned for clarity\u201d this month, alongside other improvements to Windows 11 that are part of a broader effort to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/news\/897834\/microsoft-windows-11-quality-performance-commitments-changes\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">fix the OS<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Microsoft first started trying to get rid of the Control Panel in 2012, with the launch of Windows&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":571710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1281,3,172,74,12655],"class_list":{"0":"post-571709","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-microsoft","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-tech","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-windows"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/571710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}